Vwyx grabbed the passing Sryine with her only hand, bringing her aboard the makeshift raft in the wild rapids of the water currents. Sryine was actually unconscious at the time, having passed out for a moment once she made contact with the water.

Sryine sputtered awake, feeling absolutely miserable. That was absolutely the worst opportunity to simply pass out, what if Riyxia.. where was she anyway? Sryine was quick to discover that being as dizzy as she was, the spinning craft was simply making things worse for her, she couldn’t concentrate at all. Vwyx really wasn’t feeling any better, the nausea climbing as the ride progressed. They approached a platform that was reasonably close to the water level, Vwyx picking up Sryine with her single available arm in order to ensure they both made it. The fact that it was their healer that was attacking them so relentlessly was becoming a very serious issue, they were both in some serious need of medical care, and there was no chance of it even happening. Sryine in the meanwhile was realizing something else, she might have been putting some attempts into controlling water in what seemed like the same style as every other scenario, but it wasn’t the same. As the wooden raft drifted off, it’s small design doing its best to hold firm against the raging currents, Sryine recalled the one piece she had been missing, wood elemental. This place needed more wood for her to work with. Vwyx’s health concerns for herself were also mediated a bit when she noticed an ersatz float by. Of course, all the injury suffered by ersatz would have left an impact on Riyxia, they weren’t the only ones injured fighting their healer. This entire feeling was still harsh for Vwyx, being the one with the constant responsibility to return repairs for Riyxia, as her own personal healer. She wondered just how many of the ersatz lost here might possibly be salvageable too. In all accounts though, that’s about the only repairs they needed to worry about, Riyxia herself wasn’t even bleeding much at this point, her personal injuries were rather light.

Sryine followed Vwyx’s gaze in an initial concern, worried if the ersatz had actually moved in that time and was preparing to attack them. Instead, no, it really was just floating by, much like the raft had. Actually.. a lot like the raft… Of course, all the discarded ersatz around the place, now devoid of Riyxia’s flame, were effectively a collection of life-like elements much like a regular person. However, they were much more elemental in nature.. such as physically being of a very wood-element nature. By discarding control over so many ersatz, there was thus an assorted collection of wood elements all over the place. Even so, this was only a start, she needed to make a forest of her own within this metal garden, to have a forest that was simply more than just trees. To that end, she would need Vwyx’s help.. the two of them would actually have to put some serious teamwork into a lot else. Throwing water and frost alone wasn’t enough, they needed to really bring the ice down on Riyxia. In tandem, the combination of both elements, committing both together in the goal of sapping Riyxia’s ability.. until she stopped trying to kill them. Sure, that wouldn’t solve their problems, there would be a lot else involved, but if Riyxia stopped trying to kill them, then maybe they would have the opportunity to actually figure out everything else. At the very least, maybe she would have the chance to recover her own balance.. the world no longer spinning so much in the process.

“Vwyx, can you give this place a lot more wood? If there was more wood to work with, I would be able to turn the tides of things and bring water around to our side. With that behind us, we could weather your frosting before us with the water to wither her whether she would try to weather your contribution or mine. After that she maybe might.. after.. now…” “Okay, I get it, I think. Just shut up, you’re not the only one feeling dizzy right now, your crazy is just making things worse.” Sryine stopped trying to figure out where she was going with her statement to Vwyx, really having gotten lost in the principle of the idea. It was like her head was going in circles.. actually, that wasn’t even inaccurate, that’s exactly what being dizzy implied. Vwyx had taken into honest account that even without being vocal, that swirl of misshapen logic was exactly how overwhelmed Sryine’s mind was at this point, they both needed a bit more clarity and direction. Seeing things, even in the literal sense, was challenging for her.. this magnification of her sight giving her eyes almost an elf-like potential. Wait, while adjusting to such could be difficult, that could still present her with some viable benefits. Living so much around elves, she was well aware of how the physical differences between both affected their potentials. Working with instruments since, she had been faced with recognizing how an elf’s improved senses provided them with a much more powerful sense of focus. To that end, she needed to focus upon her gift, to make use of this keen depth of vision that was applied to it. She swept around carefully, intent not on the ground but on all of the broken shards of metal and stone scattered around. She was a craftswoman, she needed to polish her art to a perfection, to get everything. Her body flared as the flame supplemented into her gift, adding extra might into its deliverance. She had never crafted something over such a vast area before, but Riyxia’s inadvertent gift made this actually a bit easier.. surprisingly enough. Soon, the water rippled as wooden branches spiralled out from it all over the place. The water fought to sustain its intensity.. but the pattern of wood started to shift the water's flow into a constant single clockwise whirl around the room, completely uniform.

With this much of a combined force going on, the water’s force attempted to extend its influence towards the other elements of the room, bringing the cold wind into the same cycle, the air rushing into a funnel wind. Sryine, having turned away from the spiral of water to watch the air, noticed how the dazzling lights of the frost quickly faded when the air was suddenly so violently disturbed. She wasn’t the only one to notice, Riyxia taking anger from the sudden shift herself. It didn’t take much for her to notice what had caused it, the two girls down below.. who were planting trees or something of all things. It was stupid, her flames could incinerate such flintwood without any challenge.. the creature of creation were so stupid. In her rage, Riyxia missed the forest for the trees. Riyxia lashed out with a flying drop kick towards the platform the girls were standing on.. only to find herself thrown across the room by a wave of the water. Sryine’s laughter broke across the room, she had done it.. she was in control of the water in the room. The intensity of the water here was also insane, the collection of speed actually making entering the water at this point possibly even more dangerous than before. The harmony of elements were all working together far too strongly. Riyxia though wasn’t about to give up, surging towards them with the might of her flame from her spectral form instead, the violet flame burning with incredible intensity. The water caught her, but it wasn’t quite enough, slamming into both girls and sending them flying in different directions. Riyxia was keenly attributed to the harmony of the elements, having dominion over life and death itself.. the unison and destruction of elements. Rending apart that unity was simply something she was good at.

Both girls clung to new platforms in the distance, their gifts providing them with the leverage they needed to not fall into the water. Sryine was worried she couldn’t keep up, that her demand over the flame would expire her physical ability to keep up with such wide application usage of it.. but she was surprised to find sustaining control over the water wasn’t as draining as she would have thought. Of course, Riyxia had improved her adrenaline in order to have her bleeding and injury worsen. This however had the additional side effect of increasing how much stamina she had at her command, increasing the aptitude of her gift. Making her blood run faster only brought more of her gift to bear.. it was what transported her ability over the gift, after all. She wondered if this was how things felt for Vwyx, a human of the flame.. supposedly humans did have this increased adrenaline by nature. If her gift was going to remain so promising for her, she saw no reason to stop there. Forget just commanding water.. Sryine reached out to the wind too, bringing control over her entire environment to her will. Lightning began to surge endlessly through the raging waters, while the wind itself started to pick her up off the metal platform and provide her with a sense of stability. It was strange, now the world really was spinning.. but she felt rather stable in her mastery of the elements. Her flame, yet another element supporting her every move, blazed its purple hue over her as a demonstration of its continued support.

Vwyx felt the sudden fill of wind, her own gift having caught her by shaping the metal before her in the process. Of course, this whole room was her craft now, free for her to shape it as she willed. The energy elements of the room were all on her side.. except for those of the flame. Sryine had said something about bringing ice to their command, a force that could yield the intensity needed to convert the flame before them also to their side. In that moment, she recalled a thought she had only considered in passing earlier, a memory that rose from Sryine’s plan. She had considered that it could be very possible to contain a flame inside a frost prison, to seal it away in the process. This flame though was a bit much for her, she would need something more.. and Sryine was providing just that. Sealing Ryixia would give them an opportunity to do something more.. but there was a problem with this. Vwyx had measured before too that sustaining such a seal would put constant demands on her just to ensure that the frost was not overwhelmed by the flame.. and that would be even more true in this case. She could create such a seal, but then she would have to depend on Sryine to deal with everything else. To prepare for such an effort, Vwyx took command over the elements at her own disposal in preparation for the process. Spinning the shadows into the wind, spinning the frost into the wind, spinning stone into the wind, she made the very presence of the world reverse until her command over the dark aspect of gravity inverted all gravitational force for everyone in the room, making those of the fire suddenly rise to the ceiling and walk upside down. Sryine was momentarily alarmed by this inversion, but managed to work with the wind to still shape this movement, Vwyx simply landing on the ceiling like she just didn’t care at all. Riyxia however was in much less control over her momentum, crashing into the ceiling hard as all of her ersatz.

“Vwyx, did you do this? I can tell you this is rather trippy, I just hope I don’t tr-…” “Sryine, shut up. If you’ve really got control over all that water up.. down there, I’m going to need it. With it, I can finally trap Riyxia, giving us an opportunity to maybe do something more. However, keeping her contained is going to take everything I have, I’m going to have to count on you to deal with the rest. You’re going to need to work with her in a frozen state and bring her back to us. I don’t expect I will be capable of holding on long, so you better have a plan ready for when I begin. Once you’ve got something to work with, just pass me a supply of the water and I’ll get started.” Sryine paused at Vwyx’s plan, realizing the implications of it. Vwyx planned to deal with the entire physical threat Riyxia offered them all on her own.. and would then in turn leave everything else for Sryine to figure out. She would even have limited time to accomplish such a feat, Vwyx certainly would find it difficult to hold out for too long. They were however still left with the problem that Riyxia did not sleep, her spectre was always awake. Well, almost always, there was that one time when Riyxia’s spectre had to sleep after reviving Ayzherie. Wait.. could she make that work for her? Why had the spectre fallen asleep again? Sryine considered some of the details Riyxia had presented to them about the experience. She had said the feeling was of being weakened, drained.. similar to how it felt to go too long without food. Eating, the flame considers food differently than most, it cares about the warmth of the food. Trapped in a cage of ice.. that might make it feel a lot more hungry.. but Riyxia’s flame was enough to endure that for a long time. However.. what if Riyxia was led to simply believe otherwise. Sryine recalled creating a horror of water at the bridge using her illusion.. an illusion even of her design having overwhelmed her so completely. Commanding an illusion of ice with the full force of her ability could make Riyxia feel starving.

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However, would that be enough? Riyxia was in a very angry state, simply encouraging sleep might not be enough when it couldn’t be simply enforced. Sryine was well aware enough how restless her spectre felt typically most nights, how such restlessness could even have an impact on her body’s sleep if she wasn’t completely relaxed. Even their rest earlier that day, Riyxia had found it difficult to relax, making sleep elusive for her until she really made the whole thing boring. It wouldn’t be enough to simply make the spectre feel starved, she also needed to instil a feeling of pure relaxation somehow in addition to that. Being starved and relaxed at the same time.. that seemed like a challenge in its own right. Sryine needed something that would inspire tranquility to Riyxia.. a scene comfortable and yet devoid of all warmth, something which would further her hunger yet present her exactly what she would want. In her current destructive trance though, she really wanted nothing.. literally nothing, all things simply destroyed in a void of emptiness as bleak as the night sky. Wait.. almost literally the night sky, Riyxia’s greatest passion was always for the stars. It dawned on her only then too.. the faint shimmering above them, the same she had ended, Riyxia had kept quiet right up until then. Even in her current state, her passion for the stars remained. Sryine would have to simply torment her with illusions of such dreams.. the distance from Celese being rendered as if nothing but an empty void, the cold desolation sapping her of everything she held as the stars she wished were just a bit further ahead. Sryine wasn’t an expert in what it might be like up there beyond the boundary of the world, no one had ever experienced it before.. but all she needed to do was to instil the flood of impressions of the stars growing ever closer, and the void sapping away all of Riyxia’s strength like it was a source of the void itself.

Vwyx found a whirl of water appearing suddenly before her, a clear and obvious warning signal for them to proceed. That was good, because Riyxia had actually regained her orientation and had actually been on the offense while Sryine was so completely distracted. At least, Sryine had seemed distracted, the whirl having thrown and electrified Riyxia in it’s sudden presence simply to interrupt Riyxia’s attack. It had probably helped that the frost mist was back again, slowing down Riyxia’s attacks in the process. It was surprising for Vwyx too, Sryine hadn’t actually been left with much time to consider things.. only turned for a moment while Riyxia stood up to attack. However, as the acceleration shell around Sryine faded, Vwyx realized that Sryine hadn’t left herself so unprepared. Of course, in matters of planning, Sryine could provide herself with all the time in the world. Vwyx felt that was good and all, but it would be up to her to provide Sryine with enough time to make that plan happen. It wasn’t as if they even had time to go over such a plan, it wouldn’t even be smart to cover such basic details with Riyxia around in the process. Vwyx would simply have to do her best, and trust Sryine to take care of the rest. Taking her part in the process, Vwyx melded the frost in the air with the water offered to her, freezing the entire thing in a mass of ice. Vwyx then began reshaping and reconstructing the very ice itself, folding it onto itself as a multi-layered sphere. Riyxia’s body came at them again, her strike ready to crush through the ice sphere before her. The ice however moved with her own motion, folding onto the momentum and bouncing from all surfaces completely harmlessly. Riyxia’s spectre went to address the sudden threat, determined to shatter such a prison.. only to find the prison itself ready to take in another host. Her spectre though would not be contained, it had passed through walls before, and so it pressed upon this wall as well. However, her spectre wasn’t efficient at passing through water, something she had only recently learned about for herself, the water elements of the ice prison effectively trapping even her spectre. Vwyx smiled at this turn of circumstances, Riyxia having completely underestimated the might of the frost and thus becoming captivated by it.

Sryine however knew that such wasn’t the only thing that needed to capture Riyxia’s attention, the intensity of Riyxia’s flame already fighting to break down the integrity of the seal. Intent on also capturing Riyxia’s complete attention, Sryine redesigned the visual layout within such an icy confinement, rendering everything pitch black and empty. She intensified the feeling of cold within the seal, the feeling that all flame was being devoured by something even greater.. and then she scattered the desolation with tiny sparkles, a scatter of stars in the desolation of space. Riyxia was thus completely alone, far far away from even Celese.. maybe the whole world just stopped existing instead. All that was left before her was her dream realized, the path to the stars finally her own. Riyxia stopped fighting, an understanding that she was simply wasting her flame in such desolate nothingness. There really was no reason to fight either, she was exactly where she wanted to be. Her craving for destruction was even realized, she was submerged in it, the very destruction seeking to drain her as well. That would certainly take a while, she could just relax in this perfect place.. waiting for the end to eventually come for her. As her hunger for the flame intensified, her hunger for destruction left her completely.. and her spectre took solace within its body in rest at last.

Riyxia gasped awake as the seal that confined her was shattered, both Vwyx and Sryine visibly worried. There was concern that they had been too quick to awaken her before her control had recovered.. there was also concern that they had been too slow, the illusion thus consuming her so completely to have instead taken all of her. Sryine was really worried that she might have overdone it, not actually being aware just how much such desolation would feel like death itself. Riyxia however was not lost to them, even her control was finally restored. Sure, after bringing the entire collection of her flame into the single body.. she had possibly the worst case of flame concentration ever.. but she was fine otherwise. Riyxia was well aware of how she was like a violet sun within the room, a star in entirely her own sense, but that was not her greatest concern at that moment. Turning to her friends, bearing witness to their substantial injuries, the shock and dread tried to drain even the violet from her face and leave her that pale. She turned to apply her gift to them, to mend their wounds.. only to find that their flames were resisting that as well. Right, all of those injuries, they were of her own doing.. she had effectively betrayed her closest friends, her own family effectively. Depression surged through her, tears of a colorless flame blazing down her cheeks. She wiped them away, the tears not actually burning her.. but that was not to say she was without pain and agony, a fear of broken ties after doing something so unforgivable, and a sadness of such might that it overpowered the intense rage her flame was offering to her.

“Don’t worry, things are going to be fine. You’re back with us, that’s what really matters. None of this is your fault, you’re just as much a victim of this as we are.” “Liyuzhe really made a huge mistake with this one, though I worry her goals were still met nonetheless. I learned Riyxia was set here as a trap to distract us.. though I expect there were no plans for things to end up this bad. Actually, on that subject, Liyuzhe apparently was on her way to the vent a while ago.. having everything she needed to make her dreams happen. I’m not sure how much time we can afford to waste here. I mean, Riyxia’s state earlier was dangerous enough that she could have possibly single-handedly wiped out the entire world.. but Liyuzhe could very easily accomplish just the same thing if she completes her own work, right?” Sryine wasn’t even aware of the additional information Vwyx had to offer, there had been no time to discuss it. This then left both Sryine and Riyxia staring at Vwyx in shock as they all started to consider that their problems weren’t quite over yet. Sryine braced to endure the pain, realizing that even though Riyxia’s healing was finally starting to have a degree of effect.. there wouldn’t be an opportunity to wait. Instead, she applied her gift to the wind, bracing herself in a wind that served both as a cushion and a brace. Vwyx considered the idea, fashioning the more practical form from metal over her arm and shoulder for the exact same purpose. Vwyx quickly otherwise recounted the details of the recording, building an awareness of just what they were still dealing with.

“Okay, I’ll take care of this, you two have done enough. Just wait here I guess, I’ll be back when things are done.” Riyxia slipped down through the ladder.. flopping onto the floor as gravity restored its normal orientation. Right, for a moment, she had forgotten that was a thing. Having control taken from her had left some of her memories rather hazy. “Wait, do you even know how to get out of here?” “Yup, I have a pretty good idea on that one.” “And.. how exactly do you plan to dive into a lake, maybe? I seem to recall that even your spectre finds the water really hard to work with.. so what options might you have left? Worse, you still have that stupid fragment.. you’re going to enter a place filled with more flame.. and you’re clearly in no position to take any more of it into you. Stop just trying to do everything, dang it! You would figure that, after everything we just had to go through, you would understand that you could count on us to have your back.” Sryine finally managed to pull the backpack from Riyxia’s possession, putting it on her own back instead. Riyxia was ready to complain about how little condition the others were to do anything.. but even Vwyx showed up with a stern expression. Being so emotionally torn, having far too much flame to work with, Riyxia might not actually be physically injured, but she wasn’t exactly in peak condition either. There were also concerns like actually dealing with the barrier presented by the lake.. and the fact that Liyuzhe could just simply try to control her again leading to even more problems. These were things she had no solution for on her own, she would need her friends there to ensure they were addressed.

“Okay, but that means we’re all taking care of each other. Vwyx, when you have an opportunity, I’m going to need a few sheets of metal.. or I guess the shape is totally up to you. Basically, something I can store extra flame into, so the vent can take it back. Sryine, could you somehow provide it with a nice coat of water or something.. like a barrier securing the flame?” “Now that’s rude, after all the hard work Vwyx has done with her own research, you’re still not even seeing the value of her incredible sealing technique. By the divine, stop underappreciating it, ice is cool! Sure, if you’ve got some problems with passing through water, it’s going to be rough to give you something you could possess, but her seal was really good at holding a spectre.. so I’m pretty certain we can make something. She would just have to be nice enough to provide you with a non-water exit or something, more frost than water at least.” Riyxia was actually surprised by Sryine’s sudden inspiration, the thought really not having come to her. She would be taking such a thing into the vent too, a place where the flame is too strong. The last time, she had endured the heat thanks to Ayzherie’s gift, itself of the frost element actually, now that she thought about it. She felt like a fool for not having considered such details before. Technically too, it was for this mistake that Vwyx had proven such a powerful advantage against her in that previous battle too…

They would need to be prepared to deal with the vent again, that was all too certain. The might of the astral flame could not be underestimated, its presence would once again be overpowering.