The lightning bolt lanced towards me, and was stopped by the power of the fox-bird creature.
The fox leapt into the air, soaring out on its own wings, its strange auric armor spell drawing the attack to it like a lightning rod, then breaking it apart, bit by bit.
I felt a surge of relief and gratefulness to the little creature… Even if I did feel like it was starting to just win my battles for me, which brought a kernel of shame.
The fox landed next to Kene, standing in front of them and letting out a little growl. Kene’s own hands were glowing with magic that swirled out to sink into me and Dusk, continuing the patchwork on my arm and providing me with his blessing spell and flame runes.
“Primes,” growled the woman, rolling her shoulders. “How many of you are there?”
I teleported into a closer range and thrust my staff up at her, while the spriggan released its own wave of attacks.
My briars and bones mingled with the spriggan’s needles and roots, but the mixed attack was rebuffed by the woman conjuring her spherical windshield again. The spinning winds caught our conjured attacks and spun them round, while I teleported the bones back to me and slid them into my spirit.
The woman swung her hammer, crackling with lightning, down at my head, and I teleported back, not even having the time to process how I’d managed it.
I glanced back to see the fox-bird maintaining a glowing blue aura over itself and Kene, and nodded.
That did make some sense. The fox was a guardian creature of some sort – it was doubtlessly strongest when protecting and defending something, and it had chosen that something to be Kene.
I could try and lure the woman to attack Kene, which would open up the possibility for the fox-bird to counterattack, but…
No.
That was too risky. She was absurdly strong, and there was a chance that the fox’s protection wouldn’t be enough.
I was caught off guard by the woman unleashing a green bolt of some sort at me, and I barely managed to teleport out of the way as I continued my battle analysis.
Kene was safe and protected, and would support me from behind those protections, but I wouldn’t likely get any help from the fox-bird unless we retreated into Dusk, which would just give the woman time to wait for us to come out.
Speaking of Dusk, where was she? She must be hiding under a veil, which meant I needed to play distraction.
I thrust my staff out and cast a three-layer fungal lock over the woman as the spriggan leapt into the air and dove down at her.
The orb of air spun and flared with lightning, and the rootlike body of the spriggan began to burn, and was thrown back off of her, but the woman was distracted by my fungal lock, tearing it apart.
I continued to add new layers as she tore them off. I wasn’t entirely sure what else I could do – I didn’t have anything strong enough to pierce that defensive sphere spell, and the only attack that…
I was an idiot.
I called out my Pinpoint Boneshard spell and wrapped it in the fire from Kene, then fired four at her. Right before they struck the shield, I teleported them through.
It was rough. The winds that they had to teleport through were packed with mana, and teleporting through dense mana was hard.
But it was still much easier than punching through it with raw attack power.
The bones appeared behind her and slammed into her back, and I had to suppress a grin as I used the moment to overcharge and double layer more Fungal Locks on her. If she was going to hover there and provide me with a wonderful target, then I’d be happy to accept.
Then the grass at my feet exploded upwards and entangled me. I let out a long curse – I’d thought the spriggan was more angry at the woman, since she’d killed the eel, but apparently she was still more than happy to try and kill me too.
The woman thrust her hand out, and I Foxstepped as high as I could manage, leaving an afterimage behind me…
Just in time to watch my illusion be torn apart by a blast of lightning.
Teleporting out the constraints of a fourth gate mage, even a weak one, wasn’t easy. The drain it put on my mana and energy was massive, and I felt my reserves tanking dangerously low. I’d teleported a lot in the fight, and even though I’d grown my spatial and temporal mana quite a bit, I was still no bastion of absolute power.
As I caught myself in the air, I reached out for my connection to Dusk’s realm, and drew upon the power of my plants, restoring my diminished mana, and I even fed a good amount from the red star tree into my Magister’s Body to help it restore my energy a bit faster.
Just in time, as the woman soared upwards, using the force of her flight to add power to the hammer swing. I teleported across from her and down several feet, catching myself with my Immovable Lock spell.
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I hadn’t had a ton of time to train in the movement style that Ikki and I had worked out, but the pressure was a great teacher. I drew out my bone shards and my Briarthreads as the woman spun in midair, then swung at me again.
Up and to the left. Then down to the left. Up to the right. Backwards.
Over and over, continually drawing upon the power of my emperor’s sapling, transivy, and pointer moss to keep myself fresh.
Occasionally, from far below us, the spriggan managed to launch a root, needle, or briar up high enough, but it was clear that she didn’t have great aerial mobility.
“Hold still!” the woman grunted as I let go of a lock and fell down to get out of the way of another one of her swings.
“Why are you doing this?!” I shouted over the rushing wind as I teleported back up, then lashed out with Briarthreads and a Fungal Lock.
“Contract,” she said. “Client wants you dead.”
“Who?” I demanded, skipping backwards in the air as she struck out with rapid swings.
I bit my lip as I lowered myself with each skip. My plants meant I’d restored my mana, but this aerial battle had been taxing for it, and I was down to about a third of my reserves again, at least for second gate.
My temporal mana especially was what concerned me. I’d used my Temporal Basin against the serpent, and it hadn’t had time to recover. While the emperor’s sapling was strong, it wasn’t as strong as the pointermoss and transivy together, so that was running low too, and I couldn’t even draw on the spare death mana in my second gate, since that was locked up within my not-yet-operational Beast Mage’s Soul.
The woman clearly didn’t see fit to answer, because instead, she turned and flew downwards as fast as she could.
I used the moment to take a few potshots at her back, but her healing and endurance let her shrug them off.
Then she smashed into the Spriggan with her hammer, unleashing a Lightning Bolt spell, the lightning infusion in her hammer, the concentrated windshield that she’d used to kill the eel, and a strength enhancement spell, all at once.
The hammer ripped the glowing heart right out of the spriggan, and it shattered, releasing an explosion of green light.
Then Dusk’s trap triggered.
Hundreds upon hundreds of tiny hands rose out of the ground, and for a moment, I feared that would be all.
But the hands began to fuse, melting together into a pair of giant arms, each one at least as tall as my body, and they kept growing, stones incorporated into the hands like bones, grass like hair.
The hands began to glow with the distinct twisting of air, space, earth, light, and reality that I’d come to recognize as Dusk’s shockwave spell, and then the pair of massive hands clamped around the woman, releasing all of Dusk’s power into her body.
I thought the woman had to be dead for sure, but the instant before the hands struck her, the woman summoned another wind orb around her that spun like wild, lightning flickering through it. She began to glow with a potent green light, even as the hands clamped around her.
The woman was fast, but not fast enough. The massive hands, glowing with the power of the shockwaves, caught her around one arm, and the power caused her arm to snap. I could see the bone sticking out of her in several places, and the woman let out a howl of pain before managing to ply her flight spell to shoot out of the grasp of the hand.
And right into the spriggan. The spriggan was reconstituting itself, and though its heart was gone, and the mana felt even less dense – maybe connected to the heart vessel somehow? – it was still a fourth gate mage.
The spriggan’s claws dug into the back of the mercenary, and I landed next to Kene, who immediately started casting healing spells over my arm.
“What’s up with her?” Kene asked.
“Someone paid her to kill me, I don’t know who,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s… I don’t know. Something’s off about it.”
“Should we run?” they asked, though I could barely hear them over the sound of lightning and root meeting alongside giant hands of earth punching and releasing shockwaves.
As I watched, the woman’s hammer ripped apart one of the hands, and the other began to dissolve. A moment later, the earth shifted around our feet, and Dusk poked her head out.
She looked exhausted, and I could feel she was on wisps of mana, but I had to admit, it was clever of her to hide under the earth to attack with the hands. She looked at Kene and shook her head, saying that we couldn’t afford to run. If we ran, the assassin would kill the Spriggan, and get another boost, just like when she’d killed the eel.
Kene frowned, but nodded slowly in agreement.
I picked up Dusk and put her in my pocket, then marched out into the fight between two spellbinders, unleashing wave after wave of Briarthreads, lacing them with the runes provided by Kene, and the woman’s head snapped to me. The spriggan’s did as well, and I looked at the spriggan before nodding to the woman, trying to tell it, to show it that we could settle our spat after we were done with her.
I think – think – the spriggan understood, because even as the woman dove at me, the spriggan unleashed three powerful root attacks at her side, pushing her off course. I teleported bones in close to the woman’s face, and she smashed them out of the way. Dusk released a shockwave at the woman with the dregs of mana she had left, and I caught her up in a Fungal Lock, before bringing down more Briarthreads.
The spriggan leapt into the air and brought down briars of its own as it shoved its claws through the wind defense to rip and tear at the woman, but the mercenary rotated her hammer in midair and slammed it into the spriggan’s head. The spriggan was blown back again, and I empowered my Brairthreads with everything I had left. I sketched out with one hand, and felt a click as my Material Echo spell came into existence.
I drained my temporal basin, even though it barely had anything, and threw it into the echo, the air clogged around me with briars, the world nothing but a sea of green threads and paler copies.
The woman smashed through them, until the fox-bird, which had been defending Kene, leapt forwards, conjuring Bluelight Fangs.
The fangs sunk into the woman, who shouted and spun, her hammer striking the side of the fox’s defensive auric armor. She unleashed another lightning bolt at point blank range, and even with the power of the fox’s defenses… It had chosen to guard Kene, not me.
Her hammer slammed into the fox and sent it flying backwards. Kene shouted and started running to the fox, green light swirling from their hands, and I was glad to see it sink in.
Healing magic didn’t work on the dead.
The fox’s nearly sacrificial move had bought me a second, but a second to do what?
The spriggan leapt at the woman, who brought her hammer down on its arm, ripping it off with more lightning – though not a full lightning bolt. She had to be drained and tired too, after all this.
My briarthreads and echoes faded as my life and time mana guttered to empty, and the woman stepped forwards, a crazed look in her eyes, as she hefted the hammer.
Running on nothing but my body's energy and the final wisps of spatial mana, I dragged myself through a Foxtstep to appear next to Kene,
I snapped open a portal to Dusk’s realm and dragged all of us inside before shutting the gate.
Even if the mercenary waited, it was better to fight her while I had mana and help than just die now.
I took several deep breaths, and then I saw it.
A black clawed hand punched through the space in the air where I’d opened the portal, and a moment later, it ripped back open, the woman standing on the other side.