The Finisher
Tua and Tanaka surged forward, their charge blunted by the wall of Akamori, Sala and Amara. Tua pressed forward, her blade flitting about in tight but wild slashes and jabs that Akamori met with a warrior’s grace. Behind Tua, Tanaka’s staff swept about left and right in wide arcs to knock aside Sala’s blows in a more defensive dance. With Sala’s attempt at locking down the mage stymied by a formidable defense, Amara filled the defensive gap.
Recognizing the threat Amara presented, Tanaka shifted to more area effect attacks and mixed in spells to augment her flow. Tua also shifted focus, making this portion of the fight flexible and adaptable. Tua’s blade hummed through the air closer to Amara’s face than she felt comfortable, forcing her to back off and respond with woven spell bolts. Tua slashed through and parried the spells away with casual ease. Anytime Tua presented an opening to Akamori he eased Thanaton in, trying to bypass the Hatchling warrior’s guard, only to come up short each time.
Because of the ground fights proximity to the edge of the second-floor balcony, no one above the ground melee had any decent line of fire without risking hitting the squad’s close range component. This development forced Yasiin, Sirsir, and Morwen to hold fire for the time being and trust in an opening to present itself. Sirsir paced like an agitated caged big cat. Yasiin remained prone as he watched down the side of his rifle to relax his aiming eye and save it from the strain. Morwen sat cross-legged in a meditated pose as he focused on her divination ability to see the end of the fight.
On the ground, Akamori slid under Tua’s blade, using his air magic to continue the slide free of her reach to change the situation up and present a threat to Tanaka. Tanaka knew he outmatched her. Sensing the momentum shift, Thanaton thrummed eagerly, as it all but bayed for blood. As Thanaton sprang up to resume the attack, her bronze spell staff flew up in a blur of movement to block the hungry blades’ advance.
Amara shifted targets with Sala, focusing their fury on Tua. Tua was far less suited to blunt force attacks, and forced to evade more often than not, offering wild counter attacks to create space and relieve the pressure on her. Results were mixed as her spell blade skipped harmlessly off of Sala’s stone skin armor, and the force of her strikes blunted by his defiant aura. He healed any damage she had achieved through his aura. This duality between defense and support allowed the war slave to focus almost entirely on delivering blows to his target. An advantage he capitalized on prolifically.
Tua’s head jerked as a massive fist caught her across the jaw and set black dots across her vision as she nearly lost consciousness. She blinked the stars away, spinning and raking a thin line across the primal’s stone skin that quickly healed. She needed a way around his healing and defenses that she would not get through brute force attacks. A reptilian grin spread across her features as she flapped her wings, backing off and cast an earth magic spell wreathing her hand in poison magic now, then dragged it along her blade. Now coated in a sickly green oil that exuded noxious fumes, Tua grinned, and beckoned Sala to engage her.
Akamori pressed his attack on Tanaka, Thanaton crashing against the bronze spell staff in a rapid staccato of beats that drew sparks and rattled the combatants hands. Tanaka retaliated quick weaving an acid bolt spell and hurling it at Akamori forcing him back. Akamori cursed and leaned back while propelling himself back to gain space from the weaver. Landing in a swirl of leather and mirrorsteel, Akamori whispered his empowerment spell to Thanaton. Air magic danced and swirled along the silver and black blade as it started humming like a struck tuning fork. The sonic vibrations lending to its cutting power.
Tanaka, sensing the danger she was in, began weaving a stone skin spell but couldn’t finish before Akamori was on top of her, blade whirling and humming. She broke the spell she was weaving to desperately block his flurry of blows. She saw lines carve into the stone of the floor and walls as he slashed and chopped at her. A column was cleaved in two at an angle toppling over. One of the stone walls they’d erected lost a corner. He was projecting air blades from his sword with casual grace and deadly precision. Her heart raced as she tried to find a way out. It was time to use their last resort.
Tanaka opened a portal and fell into it, emerging at the back of the room, safely behind the remaining fortification wall. She opened a second and Tua emerged next to her. Tua’s black armor glistened with frost from the cold of the void. Tanaka produced a glass vial that had a pallid green gas in it that swirled and writhed as though it moved on its own. Tua understood the situation and nodded her ascent.
A cross slash of wind blades punched through the wall, further enforcing Tanaka’s suspicion it was time. She threw the glass vial into the center of the room, where it broke near the melee fighters of the squad they battled. The sickly green cloud swirled and writhed, forming several spirits that eyed the living with hate and hunger. Tanaka knew they conditioned these spirits to hate the living and seek to murder.
Some spirits possessed the dead bodies of the hatchlings, while others moved straight for the squad. In a heartbeat, the momentum of the fight had shifted out of favor of the squad and firmly back into Tua and Tanaka’s hands. She regretted it had to come to this, though. Using the special item her father had prepared for such a situation. The vengeful revenants flew at Akamori who whipped his blade about in a flurry of slashes. The attacks passed harmlessly through the revenants, carving up the wall behind them.
Sala punched the revenant’s head, which exploded in ectoplasm. Turns out? Soul magic is weak against Light magic. A fact that Sala was well aware of.
“Stop screwing around… sir. Use light magic on them.”
Akamori grumbled. He didn’t have light magic. He got the blessing of light. The revenants wouldn’t be able to possess him because of the blessing, but he couldn’t destroy them easily.
“Would if I had any?”
“You didn’t get magic from your infusion?”
“No.” Akamori said sternly.
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Sala blinked. “Oh. Well, use your void magic then?”
The air around Akamori went cold, as void magic rippled around him. A cloak made of raw void magic burst into view and his limbs took on semi demonic appearances with chitinous armor. Enshrouded in his void cloak he glanced down at his sword as black and purple void glass grew around the blade like frost. The blade of the sword crystalized into the haft of a scythe, a long crescent blade grew from the end. The Destroyer returns , Thanaton purred gleefully.
The strange stillness of the scene shattered as Akamori and Sala hurled themselves at the revenants and possessed bodies. Thanaton eagerly cleaved an offending spirit, ectoplasmic goo splattered the clean white tiles. Spinning, Akamori’s void cloak dissolved an offending spirit’s hand as though it simply stopped existing. He slashed it in half for its trouble.
Sala pounced on a hatchling, pounding its head into goo as a sickly green smoke hung in place for a moment before billowing away. Another possessed Hatchling rushed the war slave before losing an arm and being snatched by the ankle and smashed into two more like a big meaty club. After beating two more zombies with the first, he dropped what remained of the leg he’d been holding. He looked up in time to more and more filling the room. Akamori’s attacks had gone from single target focused attacks to sweeping area attacks. Sirsir and Yasiin had also joined in with Morwen’s help.
The pitch of the fight was quickly slipping away from the squad if they didn’t do something drastic and fast. More spirits rose from the ground in clouds of greenish white smoke. A tear in reality cracked open, revealing the negative lit glow of the Soul Realm, and a Banshee drifted through. Black hair fell down both sides of its head. Its face, if such a word could be assigned was featureless and looked like someone had pulled a bag over someone’s face, leaving only the mouth.
The Banshee’s head cocked back, and it screamed. The sonic and soul reverberations stunned Akamori, dropping him to a knee. The rest of the squad staggered to the ground besides Sala, who was still safely within his Aura. Even the primal struggled against the attack, though, clutching his head and gritting his teeth.
Akamori’s vision swam as he glanced up, squinting through the cold and pain at the Banshee. We need to destroy the Banshee! Thanaton growled. Akamori grit his teeth. I know! But I can’t! The sword thrummed agitatedly. Being soul linked, it knew what was happening to him.
His body pressed to the ground, cold and numb, like he was being crushed in a gas giant’s gravity well. His limbs were weak, like he’d just run several marathons. A tangent thought popped up, wondering what exactly marathons were, but his primary logical mind hushed the stray thought and pushed it aside. The Banshee had literally stolen the wind from his sails, and he was powerless to fight back.
He watched with dread as the Banshee inhaled to scream again, head cocking back like the slide of a pistol. But before the banshee could fire a second shot from those baleful dead lips? The Banshee’s head evaporated into ectoplasmic goo in a blast of fiery red and orange plasma that scorched the back wall black as night. All the spirits paused, confused, and glanced up and behind Akamori as the room lit up like a second sun had just manifested.
Luffa drifted down into view, hands aglow with light and fire magic mixed. Fist sized orbs of raw aether with magic runes and circles that rotated around them in an organized and lazy pattern. Akamori didn’t recognize the framework of the spell, but he was certain Amara was already puzzling it out with her visual magic. Like Sala’s defensive aura, Luffa was wreathed in fiery radiant gold flames that writhed and billowed.
“Luffa!” Amara strained. “Hey Amara. Erlaut was worried about your squad when our attempts to scry your squad were actively being blocked. He portaled me here to help. Just in the nick of time by the look of things. Let’s do something about this Soul Lure.”
Luffa cupped her hands in front of her, whispered a brief incantation, and an orb of plasma formed in front of her hands like a star being born. Smaller motes of energy spilled into the orb like it was drawing them in. The more energy it sucked in, the larger it grew. Then Luffa launched an orb the size of a human torso into the floor where the glass file fragments lay, along with the rising souls. The spell bomb detonated, and a blast wave of light and fire magic incinerated all the revenants, and even some of the possessed bodies.
Debris and ash detonated outwards after Luffa’s attack. The air changed instantly, and whatever oppressive effect that the Banshee created evaporated in the raw heat and magic of Luffa’s attack. The war slave floated down next to Sala and gave him an appraising look.
“Hi.” She said. The intensity of her entrance faded an octave.
Sala blinked and lifted a massive hand to wave back awkwardly. Rarely did two primals cross paths on Eryn. Akamori dashed forward a few steps, waving the smoke and debris cloud aside. His lungs burned from breathing in the tangy, charged ozone. Coughing, a few times, he finished waving the area clear and he could only blink.
“Damn.” he muttered.
Luffa had leveled everything in a few sweeps of blasts. Having her attack had been the equivalency of firing off a spell ship’s cannon. He turned to regard the war slave with fresh eyes, appreciating Luffa and Sala for the engines of destruction that they were. Begrudgingly, he had to respect the Eryn nobility for choosing to make warriors of the Primals even though it meant forced slavery.
“Hey. Where’s the two hatchling sisters?” Amara asked, her eyes glowing with radiant magic, small hints of prismatic color shining on them.
Akamori turned back to the entrance down to the basement and cursed. He sprinted forward and crashed through a final door at the bottom. It was a small safe room, laying in a pool of his own blood was the Administrator in the corner. An expendable asset that had just been expended.
“Now what?” Akamori muttered as Captain Morwen reached the bottom of the steps.