Great. He’s a shackler, and capable spirit bolt weaver. Plus, he’s a dragon, so he’s probably able to use that as a breath weapon, which means getting in close to hurt him is both my best and worst bet. I’ll have to feign an attack to provoke the breath attack, dodge it, then retaliate. No matter what, though it’s doubtful I walk away from this. Oh well. That just means I don’t have to put up with Rayshe later.
“Amara, on my mark, open fire. Keep him pinned if you can. Don’t let him port away.”
“Got it.”
He flicked his blade to the side, feeding it some dark energy. The blade glowed with swirling violet energy. On his mark, Amara unleashed hell as he blasted his back with a wall of air, hurtling his head on at the shackler.
“A hasty death it is then,” he said with a smile and an indifferent shrug.
He blurred forward on a storm gale of wind, his blade sang with a high-pitched hum as it cut a path through the air. Air magic playing up and down the edges as he closed in. Flicking his wrist, he brought the blade up. The shackler blocked it with a finger and a wide, sharp-toothed grin before his body exploded in motion. The human form warped and melted away into the shape of a massive dragon. The finger elongated into a massive ivory talon that casually shed sparks against his blade in a struggle. Akamori was immediately thankful for the armor’s water reclamation spell, as he may have peed a little in the armor then. Not that he’d fully admit it to anyone, ever.
“Okay, how the hell am I supposed to beat that?”
“Get around his back?”
He shrugged. It was the best he had to work with. “Cover me.”
In response, a flurry of pink bolts peppered the sickly green scales of the dragon as it roared, and breathed an off-green breath attack that looked half sickly fog, half spreading flame. Amara broke off her attack and broke into an evasive flight in retreat.
The diverted attention gave him time to dance to the dragon. He pushed as much dark and air magic into the blade as it could. It vibrated in his grip, eagerly drinking up the magic. The air around the blade darkened with the absence of light as crackling violet bolts of energy danced up and down the blade's length. Sweat dripped down his brow, stinging at his eyes. He poured air into the armor and at his back as much as he could to amplify his speed. This attack had to count.
Akamori howled a wordless war cry and brought the blade down across the dragon's back. The spell discharged into the bleeding groove it carved. Dark lightning danced into the dragon’s body as the shadow-charged air slash dissolved scales and muscle down to the spinal column of the dragon. The last traces of dark lightning danced playfully between its wings as the beast sagged in the air, crushing several buildings beneath it with an angry glare at him as it snapped its jaws, nearly plucking him from the air.
Retreat! Akamori felt a voice call and realized it was his blade's consciousness. It was developing its own battle sense?
He sheathed the blade and fell back to Amara. The dragon was already struggling for purchase to get its feet under it. It roared at them defiantly and then flapped its wings, rising for the transparent steel dome.
“Oh, fuck…” Akamori muttered. “We need to anchor down, now!” He grabbed her shoulder armor, and flew as hard as his armor would allow for the ground, crashing through a glass door and bending the frame as he sought some kind of below-ground access. There! A metro-transit train (whatever those were?). He got them halfway down the tunneled stairway when a great crashing sound in the distance signaled the dragon’s exit from the station. Immediately after, their forward momentum was arrested, and the vacuum pulled them backward. He kicked off Amara’s back, aiming her at handrails along the wall. Unfortunately, the motion threw him off balance and he tumbled against the wall like a wildly tossed bounce ball. Pinging off objects painfully, the paper doll flashed multiple colors before settling on an angry red. If it were as sentient as his sword, he imagined it’d have choice words for him.
He reached out and used his air magic to grip a rail and tugged himself towards it. Relief flooded through him as his fingers wrapped around it even as he still bounced off the wall several times, grunting from the impact. Finally, the station’s breach protocols kicked in and a quick deploying nano-gel membrane spread over the large break. Soon, the station resealed and repressurized.
As it did, he felt the pull on him lessen. As gravity reclaimed him, he used the dark magic to counteract its effect on him long enough to reorient himself before setting his feet back down on the tiled floor with a thud. His knees shook, and he collapsed to his hands and knees for a moment, panting. After a beat, he got back to his feet with some unsteady effort.
He leaned over to pant as Amara came back up the stairs, nursing what he figured was a bruised hip. She reached back and slapped his helmet, nearly knocking him over.
“Don’t ever do something like that again! You could have been sucked out into the vacuum!”
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He laughed as the helmet's visor rippled back in layers of plates. “Sealed armor? I’d have been fine.”
“And fighting a dragon. Not ideal circumstances. You’re lucky we survived this time.”
“Yeah. Let’s get this totem so we can get back to the others.”
He took a few moments more to get his wind back. The notion amused him given he was an air mage. He hated putting off battles to deal with later. In his experience, it only ever made them worse, but they had little choice here. Thankfully the dragon fled, likely fearing them far more since he could wound it. If only it’d realized how much doing that had taken out of him. That was one bluff he was happy hadn’t been called.
Amara closed her eye and focused, allowing the sound and sight to fall away from her as she tapped into a sense she’d been working to hone more since Hoshun. In her mind's eye, she could sense magic elements. Next to her, Akamori stood as a luminous body of air and dark magic. Even his blade glowed faintly, touched by the two wellsprings. They were not alone, though, and it remained in the building they’d launched their ambush on. A small urn that pulsed with waves of spirit energy stitched together by a latticework of runes. Magical instructions for defining the spell and holding it together, she realized. That was their target, the totem.
She looked up in its direction. “It’s back in the room we first attacked the dragon in.”
The pair lifted off and flew back to the office. She pointed out an unassuming globe on the desk that had curiously survived the spirit bolts flung at them earlier. Odd that she’d missed that. She studied the small patchwork of pink runes. She executed several counter-mind signs and the illusion spell dissolved from the globe, revealing the totem for its true appearance.
The totem was a swirling sphere of soul energy wrapped in a framework of runes that pulsed with earth, mind, and soul runes. The pair looked at the totem curiously for a moment.
“So we break this, and that sets free all the bound souls trapped in the undead?”
“It’s as good a guess as any,” Amara said. She folded her arms, her eye narrowing as she scrutinized the rune work.
“If I hit it with mind bolts, that should crack the frame holding all the soul energy. Then, if you hit it with your powerful void spell, it should come apart.”
“Should?” he asked.
She gave him an uncertain shrug. “This is just all guesswork.”
“Well, it’s the best idea we’ve got. Ready?” He tightened his grip on his sword.
Amara leveled her pistol, swirling pink mind energy building within the barrel of the pistol. He knew little about the other magical aspects, but he knew mind energy could alter reality or how the mind perceived it, anyway. He was comfortable with his air magic, and the dark magic was becoming familiar enough to use more easily now, too. He focused a moment, following Amara’s example, and channeled dark magic down the blade. The void wreathed the blade, devouring light and obscuring the blade. He nodded to Amara that he was ready, and she fired on the totem three times. Pink shards of energy fade away into the aether with each shot. When she’d finished, the frame of runes had several large cracks in the mind runes.
His turn now. His arms tensed as the muscles tightened for the swing, then he brought the blade crashing down on the sphere. The shadow blade crashed into the framework of runes. There was a high-pitched keening as the runes strained against the void spell before shattering into aether shards. As soon as the grid of runes shattered, the whirling, gaseous-looking globe of soul energy contracted before bursting out in a wave that dispersed. As the stored soul energy rippled through him, Akamori felt an overwhelming sense of relief and gratitude as it pulsed through him. His eyes felt extra damp, and he blinked away the unshed tear, then turned back to Amara.
“Well, I guess it’s time to go back and face the music.”
Back on the ship, marines all around him clapped and cheered, and he felt increasingly self-conscious. Akamori leaned close to Amara, his helmet retracted to the collar of the neck.
“Why are they clapping at us?”
Lt. Fennex approached him from the left and fell in step with them as they strolled through the gunmetal grey hangar deck.
“It’s because of how you stood up to Rayshe back at the station. We all knew the gig we signed up for when we joined the Federation. It’s no secret most mages look down on normals with a bit of contempt, especially on Eryn. But Rayshe was the absolute worst for all of that classism shit.”
Akamori frowned. “Father always said that your clan’s strength depended on your weakest man’s commitment to the clan. If your clan crumbles in combat, it doesn’t matter how strong you are on your own,” he mused.
Fennex nodded, “Your old man sounds pretty smart. Is he in the Federation, too?”
Akamori shook his head. “No, the Sauridius attacked my homeworld. He died in the fighting.”
Fennex sighed as they passed by the munitions bay. Several large black and yellow striped lines marked off sections of ammo crates. “Sounds like Tohruun and Kofex. We tried to defend those colonies, but they just overran us with undead and soul bound. Gods damned magic shit. Er..no offense.”
Akamori eyed the eltee curiously, then gave him an indifferent shrug. “None taken. So why do I feel like I’m taking my last rites march?”
Fennex stared at him blankly, then looked up and down the hangar bay before nodding. “Because you probably are. Lt. Rayshe ain’t gonna stand fer what you did to him back on the station. He’s the worst kind of snobby aristocrat kid. Thinks the universe revolves around him and has absolutely no regard or value for those under him. The fact you knocked him out cold and kept him asleep? He’ll want your heads.”
Akamori sighed with a nod. “Great.”
Amara gripped his hand with a concerned squeeze. He turned to face her, and she gave him a nod. “We’re in this together.”
That put some steel in his resolve. “Thanks,” he said, and faced the ramp rising into the ship. To his surprise, Fennex stayed at his side as well. Private Salanaat even fell in behind them, though he mostly looked at the floor until Amara wrapped an arm around his shoulder and tugged him side by side with her. Sala shrank under the gesture but eventually warmed into it. Akamori admired that about her and figured it was likely why she made such a good priestess.
He paused at the top of the ramp and looked back into the hangar bay to see all the marines were still watching them. He wilted under the attention, unsure of how to react to it. “They’re still looking at us.”
“You put your necks on the line and risked your own lives in their stead. That look they’re giving you? To them? You’re their heroes.”