Chapter 102: Actual Play
A lot of things slammed into place for me at once.
Why Mask’s playstyle in his first reported invasions had sounded like normal Third Eye PVP, but soon after it changed to something no one else seemed able to replicate.
How Mask could swap to using his Key to disappear attacks without losing control over the darkness he used for offense.
Why Mask had had no compunctions about attacking Bernie, and tonight had acted offended that Lena hadn’t brought him for the rematch.
Why Mask felt so confident taking on even groups of players when he seemed to be operating solo.
And, finally and most significantly, the white-hot edge of Mask's conjured Iron. It seared into my chest. I felt like I’d fallen onto the edge of a working stove, which would’ve sucked if it came and went like most Third Eye pain. Because the damage kept accruing, though, this agony didn’t go away.
Third Eye was screaming at me to get this shit the hell off me.
I think I might have screamed right along with it.
I jabbed blindly at my phone screen and got Stone. I slammed the conjured object into Mask's. That managed to push the burning edge away. Barely. It flipped in midair and over the next two seconds, clashed dozens of times with my frantically spinning Stone.
Lena tried to redirect her Iron into a makeshift shield, but she had so little Air compared to Mask and I that she couldn’t even change the angle he struck from. She should’ve concentrated on hitting Mask while he was distracted, but I didn’t have a second to spare to comment on anyone else’s play.
Sparks flew. Stone cracked.
Maybe I’d lucked out with the Stone. It came away from the exchanges chipped and pitted, but its sheer mass held it together better than I’d expected. Mask's Iron, softened by heat and weakened by whatever Water or Earth technique focused that heat on one edge, first deformed, then snapped down the middle.
He discarded it and conjured more. That still bought me enough time to get a glimpse of the battlefield.
His Daimon – Phantom, apparently, and I had to wonder if that was the name he’d given it or Third Eye’s description of its type – writhed and contorted, lashing at Erin and Michelle. Its tendrils and needles and pseudopods bubbled up seemingly at random from the shadow it cast across the dirt.
It didn’t seem to be hitting the girls, at least not yet.
Michelle had retreated to pure defense, soaring around the field with her Air filling her Plastic sail. Phantom darkened the ground she was about to land on and she adjusted mid-air, pulling herself aside and landing safe and smooth on the sidewalk.
Erin had used Earth to shape a broad Stone bowl and Air to bring it close enough to step into. Whenever Phantom tried to extrude something to strike her, she just rolled her crude chariot to absorb the blow.
As I watched, though, the weakness of her defense became obvious: it could protect against anything, as long as it came from below. When Mask twisted and sent his Iron flying back at Erin, there was no way she could block it at the same time as the strikes Phantom continued to launch from all around her.
I flung my Stone in her direction, but I’d lost my speed advantage. Mask clearly had every bit as much Air as I did. I willed my crude shield toward Erin. Trouble was, Third Eye didn’t give a shit how much I wanted something, only how many resources I poured into it.
I simply didn’t have enough.
Erin cried out and tumbled out of her chariot. My Stone smashed into the back of Mask's Iron and batted it away before he could strike her again, but with her own defenses no longer protecting her, Phantom closed in.
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I risked trying to smash a blow into the roiling mass of the Daimon, even though it meant giving Mask a second of free reign.
I realized my mistake when I saw his Iron tumble into the street.
It meant he hadn’t tried to resist when my Stone slammed into it, and that he hadn’t called it back.
He’d deselected the object to conjure another. In fact, I was pretty sure he’d baited me into defending Erin specifically to get my Stone out of the way.
I’d grown too used to fighting Phantom, whose attacks weren’t as powerful as the nastiest stuff we could pull out with Third Eye, but who didn’t obey the same one-at-a-time rules. Was that more bait on Mask's part, luring people into fighting the wrong way so that when he cut loose they’d forget their basics? Or had I screwed up all on my own, with no need for my opponent to get in my head?
All those thoughts stampeded through my mind as I frantically worked my fingers to conjure a new shield closer to Lena and I.
I almost made it.
Another piece of Iron smashed my legs out from under me. I hit the dirt knee-first and rolled, more on instinct than with any plan in mind. The closest thing to a saving grace was that Mask had traded power for speed. Pure Air, no Fire.
Of course, as saving graces went, this one only lasted for the first attack. His next strike sizzled when it hit the mud where I’d lain.
I kept rolling. Right into Phantom. The Daimon punched me in the small of my back. Painful, but nothing compared to how big a problem it was that I couldn’t keep retreating from Mask.
Darkness surged around me, but the scariest thing was the single line of light headed straight for my face. Mask had adjusted his object again, focusing all its heat back to one edge. Gerry’s technique, originally. Had Mask forced him to cough it up or developed it independently?
Instinct took over. Instead of doing anything useful, I flung my hands up in front of me and braced for pain.
It came, but only in the form of Phantom jabbing me in the back again.
I scrambled to my feet, smacked Phantom away with an almost unconscious swing of my Stone, and panned my phone around.
Mask's Iron hissed in the mud beside me, cooling rapidly, abandoned.
The man himself hunched over, clutching his chest. His boots had carved furrows in the mud, and he stood in the center of a semicircle of shrapnel. His paintball vest smoldered around a caved-in portion of its foam. His voice changer crackled with heaving breaths. When he spoke, it was obvious even through the distortion he was gasping. “What the fuck?”
I could’ve told him. I’d gotten hit by the same missile when we were training at Rita Blanca.
Why would I tell, though? I’d be a pretty shitty assistant if I warned our enemies about The Magnificent Ashbird’s secret techniques.
Admittedly, when I looked at that damaged paintball vest, I almost did feel like I had to warn people. I knew how much the missile had hurt when I experienced it through my HP, but I was pretty sure Mask’s armor had only been subjected to the part of its impact that was aligned with the real world. For a person without HP, would getting hit by that be the equivalent of getting shot? If so, it was the first unambiguously dangerous Third Eye technique anyone but Albie had shown off.
Lena didn’t seem inclined to stop using it.
“I thought I was pissed when you hurt Bernie,” she said. She stepped forward and conjured another piece of Iron.
Mask called up another of his own, but Plastic wrapped around it and pulled it down. Michelle flashed a thumbs up.
“I thought I was pissed when you kidnapped our friends,” Lena continued. Her Iron wrapped into a tube, then crimped at one end into an aerodynamic missile.
Mask let go of his captured object and flung new Iron wildly in Lena’s direction. I batted it aside. He hadn’t had the chance to pump as much Air into it as with his previous objects; I gave him no time to.
“I thought I was really pissed when you interrupted me and Cam tonight,” Lena continued. Her Iron twitched in the grasp of her Air.
Mask swapped to pure defense. His already dark clothes turned murky and indistinct across his chest. This had to be what it looked like when he used his Key to shield himself. I cast around for some way to negate it, but Erin was way ahead of me. One of her wires snagged Mask's arm and tugged him sideways, exposing his back.
“But what pissed me off so, so much more,” Lena finished, “is that you made me hurt a Daimon.”
Her missile shot forward. Just before it made contact, she jabbed her fingers six times into her phone screen.
I didn’t have hot Iron plunging toward my face this time, and the missile wasn’t knocking the sense out of me. I heard its explosion ripple across the field. I saw the mass of it smash Mask and Phantom to the ground, and the shrapnel rain down around them.
None of that was what stunned me, though. I forced myself to keep my eyes on Mask, even, robotically, to advance on him, but it was all I could do not to stare at Lena.
Because I’d just realized that her “secret technique,” the move she’d asked Zhizhi not to film until she got something better, the strongest attack I’d seen a normal Third Eye player deploy, the first manifestation of the game I’d seen that impacted the real world enough to be dangerous?
Only used six of her seven Fire.