Tala’s days rolled by, each blurring into the next as each day felt much like the next.
She was honestly starting to wonder if anything would ever change.
* * *
Tala staggered as a wave of roiling magics threw her deeper into the cell.
The concussion of clashing powers shot from the cell’s entry tunnel—like a bolt from a crossbow—just behind the initial burst that had thrown her free.
-More like one of your siege orbs going off!- Tala could feel Alat fighting to right their senses and clear up the muddled state into which her mind and threefold sight had been thrown.
It was likely only her fully deployed armor which had allowed her to come out so well from the hit.
She had a moment of disorientation as she picked herself up off the ground, utterly unaware of how she’d gotten there, or even why she was in a cell at all, even if all that she was seeing let her be certain that that was where she was.
Then, Alat’s ministrations came into effect, and the memory came back.
She was in a cell with her unit to help close it down. That much had been mostly obvious to begin with, except the fact that no one was around her.
She, Terry, and Rane had advanced down the entry tunnel, acting as the vanguard as they usually did. She had been especially on edge due to the nature of the prisoner.
He was Reality-twisted—as so many prisoners were, it seems—but he specialized, specifically, in the revocation of soul-connections. For most, that would mean being kicked out of their body and on to the next world, something that Reality was rather pleased with.
Tala didn’t know the method of this man’s immortality, especially because he wasn’t even human.
Regardless, things hadn’t gone as expected. Tala and Terry had reached the cell proper—with Rane right behind—only to find the Mezzanni man waiting for them just to one side, somehow unseen by her threefold sight until it was too late.
He had raised a hand and struck past her, at the Paragon back in the antechamber.
The Paragon hadn’t fallen to his attack—of course—but her deflection and reflexive counter strike had caused the detonation, practically right on top of Tala and Terry.
Terry had flickered away to safety, but Tala’s flickering instincts weren't quite so perfected.
She groaned, shaking her head in an attempt to clear it.
The surrounding nature that made up the cell was utterly untouched on a mundane level, proving that the detonation had been purely magical in nature.
As her threefold sight came back into focus, she immediately saw where everyone was.
Rane was unconscious within the passage. There was nothing physically wrong with him, but his spirit had been disrupted enough that he’d lost consciousness. Though, it did seem like he’d be regaining consciousness soon, if given the chance. He’d likely been able to mitigate some of the blast through kinetic manipulation, but not enough to come out unscathed.
-Enar isn’t responsive either.-
Masters Clevnis, Girt, and Limmestare and Mistresses Vanga and Cerna were all back out in the atrium, seemingly thrown out just as Tala had been thrown in. They’d been affected similarly to Rane, but at least Mistress Vanga was already beginning to stir.
Irondale and her sanctum were anchored just outside the atrium, and that had given them enough distance that not even a ripple of the clash had reached them.
The Paragon… Tala was having trouble remembering her name through the remaining fuzz.
-Mistress Dihsre.-
Thank you.
Mistress Dihsre was staggering, still on her feet, but with her aura churning about her like a hurricane-tossed ocean. Her gaze was locked on the prisoner, seemingly still visible, even to her mundane eyes, down the length of the entry tunnel.
Terry was flickering around the prisoner, slashing and striking the man apart. Unfortunately, only the mundane—if still monstrously powerful—strikes landed.
Whenever Terry aspect-mirrored Flow’s edge-magics onto his talons, the prisoner’s very flesh seemed to move out of the way rather than be struck.
It looked like she was watching someone try to attack a cloud of gnats with a switch.
Even so, Terry didn’t let up. He used mundane strikes to keep the man in pieces, even if that never lasted long.
He moved masterfully, setting up strikes from new angles every time, but the Mezzanni seemed to have spherical perception of some kind, because he always managed to avoid the magically enhanced strikes, while taking the simple slashes and slams.
It overall seemed pointless on the surface, as the man regrew faster than even Tala could have healed, clearly pulling from the nature around him. Even so, it was far from useless.
Their whole point within the cell was to delay and tie up the prisoner, and Terry was doing that perfectly.
He never overextended, he never allowed the man to have enough space to strike back. He was entirely dictating the flow of the clash, even if he couldn’t end it.
To be fair, though, they hadn’t actually expected to be able to end this prisoner.
He’s doing the work of the entire unit.
-But he can’t keep it up forever. He is asking for your assistance at your earliest convenience.-
He’s getting tired?
-Apparently, there’s something around the man that’s making Terry’s flickering monstrously more costly, and it’s starting to wear on Terry to an extreme degree. He’s got another couple minutes at maximum, and he doesn’t want to come up hard against his limits.-
Let him know I’m on my way.
-Done.-
Tala set her feet and crouched to spring at the man just as he opened his mouth and shouted. His voice was the slamming of stones in a rockslide, the roar of an avalanche racing toward her down a steep slope, “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY PEOPLE?”
He was confined before the Leshkin… Oh, no. Tala felt herself pale even as she launched herself in an arching leap toward the ongoing clash.
He had somehow sensed—through the open cell entrance—that something was wrong with those who had been like he was now. The Leshkin were the Leshkin in part because they’d lost who they once were—at least to her understanding. Would he be able to change that? Whoever he actually was?
That would certainly make the upcoming Leshkin war… different, this time around.
Regardless, his question clearly wasn’t directed at her, personally, but more at her as the closest representative of the human race.
We might be able to delay him a bit by giving him some answers, but there is no way we can trust he’s not doing something else while we chatted.
They couldn’t let him build power. There was clearly no magic around him, but there was just as clearly Reality shenanigans going on, his healing being a singularly obvious example.
They knew that killing him wouldn’t do anything long-lasting, if they even could. After all, his people had been one with their homes, and this cell—as much as he likely wanted to leave it—was his. Even so, killing him would slow him down enough that she and Terry should be able to get backup. The whole unit, working together, would hopefully be able to buy enough time to allow Mistress Dihsre to do what needed doing.
Tala felt an odd dissonance from the man, as his features never shifted from a neutral set. Even when he’d shouted about his race, there hadn’t been any emotional cues on this visage.
She didn’t know if that was an artifact of Mezzanni as a whole, or this prisoner’s circumstances or temperament, and she didn’t really have the luxury of trying to figure it out.
As she closed in, Tala did not consider the fact that Rane was effectively defenseless less than a dozen yards from this forest of destruction.
As she arced downward from her powerful leap, her blood-red gaze fixed on the prisoner’s oddly piercing wooden one. She closed the distance, bringing Flow around for a powerful strike.
Even before she reached him, however, they clashed, her aura against… nothing that she could truly feel.
It was the equivalent to wrestling with an invisible opponent. Something was obviously opposing her, obviously trying to drive her authority backward, but she couldn’t see it properly. She flared void-magics across her armor, being careful to not fully enclose herself, as she didn’t want a true existence shield.
That lessened the strain some, but it didn’t remove it entirely. This Mezzanni simply had too much metaphysical weight for her to fully negate.
Terry’s very presence flickering around the area was giving her aura a foothold, allowing her to press forward without being directly exposed to whatever was going on in the zeme within the cell.
She also began driving iron spikes around the area, far enough away that they wouldn’t be threatened by the turmoil, but close enough to add reinforcement to her efforts.
Even so, the resistance caused her to fall short of her target, forcing her to strain forward step by step.
How the rust is Terry doing anything under this onslaught? Can you see any solution, Alat?
-I’m working on it!-
Work faster!
-Yeah, Tala, that’s the issue. I’m taking my time.-
Yeah, yeah. Tala grit her teeth, pushing through the opposition to bring void-Flow across into a solid chop.
The void-edge of Flow—coupled with the void around her armor—allowed for a smooth, if still slowed strike.
Magical void is the antithesis of Reality, and Flow’s edge should be a perfect method of delivery. If anything could hurt the thing more than they had anticipated, it should be a strike like this. After all, he’d not let Terry land a blow with even the non-void version of these magics.
Tala flowed along with her strikes, falling into the Way of Flowing Blood more fully than she felt like she had since the end of her time in Platoiri.
-Well, actually you—-
Don’t care. Keep working.
-Fine.-
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Tala felt like her acceptance of her continued identity as an Eskau of the House of Blood—along with having an arcane as her opponent for the first time in what felt like forever—allowed her to truly utilize the style to its fullest.
Unfortunately—of all things—the man seemed to be at least passingly familiar with the Way of Flowing Blood. That didn’t allow him to counter it fully by any means, but he did seem to be able to anticipate her movements a bit more than seemed otherwise feasible.
The prisoner’s barklike skin and woody flesh split before Flow, not due to its edge but because his body itself broke and moved to avoid the void-magic blade just as it had before Terry’s void-laced attacks.
It was incredibly frustrating, but at the same time, there was something soothing about effectively going through a form in the middle of a battle.
Then, he struck back at her, but not physically.
The invisible force hit her like a peppering of shrapnel from a nearby explosion.
It slid off of Tala’s armor without leaving the least bit of damage.
His eyes widened in surprise at that, and Terry took full advantage of his startlement, severing a hand with one slash of void-edged talons and raking deeply into his back with the other.
The prisoner screamed in pain and rage, fighting back with renewed vigor, falling to mundane methods for the following few moments.
The whole area seemed to be under his command, pulling toward him to become one with his body even as he used the mass to form outwardly striking vines and branches which grew out specifically to attack Tala or Terry. Those attacks broke against her armor, their connection to the Mezzanni shredded by the void-magic used in the defense. Terry simply avoided those sent his way.
Even with the limbs being destroyed with every attack, they were hard hits, and they forced Tala to fall even deeper into the Way of Flowing Blood.
Terry clashed with the man, seemingly being allowed to land blows, as they healed too quickly to have any consequence. Even when he slammed into the man, he couldn’t knock him off balance enough for Tala to actually connect.
Unfortunately, the aspect-mirroring of Flow’s void-magics into Terry’s talons had enough of a latency and buildup that they could be detected before contact, even if such should have been too minimal to allow for action.
The Mezzanni was simply faster than they were.
It honestly reminded Tala of her early days, when she was physically outclassed by most of the things she fought.
She was displeased.
In irritation, Tala brought more and more tools into play, her tungsten balls and rod, her defensive discs, and even a couple of weapons that she’d put on her belt for Terry to use were thrown into the fray.
She kicked herself for not having the anti-Leshkin arrowheads that she’d gotten from the Guards’ Guild so long ago, but they were in her sanctum, and she was glad that that wasn’t in here with her.
No need to subject Kit to this creature’s powers.
She was able to weave a simpler, weaker version of those magics into her armor, but that only mitigated the power of his hits a bit, given they were already breaking up upon contact regardless.
Her aura was in constant turmoil as well, clashing against whatever flexing of Reality the prisoner had at his disposal. As such, she didn’t trust herself to flicker around despite all her practice. It would probably have been safe, but at the moment, it wasn’t worth taking such a risk just for a delaying action.
The others of their unit were beginning to stir, and Mistress Vanga was already staggering toward the cell tunnel entrance.
Backup was on its way.
The Healer’s magics had swept the others, seemingly confirming what Tala had seen already. They were physically fine.
When Mistress Vanga reached Rane, he was in a state to be helped to his feet by the woman.
Alright, it’s time to put on the pressure.
It was a funny thought given the circumstances. She was effectively dancing around in a tight area, Flow cutting an unending series of passes through the area her opponent should be but wasn’t.
Terry was flickering about landing blows of all kinds—even while those bearing magic were still avoided—as well as throwing weapons to add to the maelstrom.
Balls and discs and a rod were flying here and there at her and Terry’s pulls. Yet this prisoner seemed utterly certain of everything he needed to dodge. He was perfectly capable of absorbing, redirecting, taking, or evading every attack to the best effect.
Tala even slammed through his chest with a pair of siege orbs, but they were effectively useless. The holes were healed as quickly as any other damage, and even when they burst apart, he reformed despite the ice in barely an eyeblink.
Taking damage simply didn’t seem to matter to this prisoner unless it was specifically destructive and magical in nature.
She even used her not-quite-perfected dissolution breath, but it simply wasn’t a wide-scale enough attack to hurt, given the type of damage it did. She could see the parts dissolved being severed from the Mezzanni entirely, but he simply pulled in more vegetative mass and continued the fight.
Regardless, Tala decided it was time to either make him struggle more or bring this to an end. Despite his initial question, he hadn’t said anything further, nor really given them the space to answer.
Rude.
-Quite. Terry’s ready.-
Go.
At the very last instant before a strike—a simple, mundane slash with the talons on his foot—Terry did something for the first time this fight. Flow flickered out of Tala’s hand and into Terry’s closing talons, turning the simple—if powerful—slash into a vicious one, laden with void-magic.
It struck true, bisecting the Mezzanni from shoulder to hip and the world around them seemed to freeze as a second scream of pain and rage—this time too high pitched for mundane ears to hear—screeched through the cell.
The Mezzanni seemed to come apart at the seams—even without accounting for the through-and-through slash—expanding in obvious agony.
Even so, it was only a moment before the man reformed, staggering even as Flow flickered back to Tala’s hand.
The invisible force that had been battling with Tala’s aura hitched, allowing Tala to feel confident in flickering to his other side, cutting him in half horizontally with void-Flow and eliciting another pulse of not-magic through the air, knocking them both back.
Before Tala or Terry could rush back in to capitalize on the momentary weakness, another pulse of power slammed outward with much more force, tearing apart the ten bloodstars that were letting her use the rod, discs, and balls.
Tala had a sliver of a moment in which to panic before the pain tore into her very soul.
The bloodstars weren’t quite soulbonds, but they were inextricably tied to her soul—or at least they had been—and that had been torn away with brutal violence.
The world faded from her perception for an instant, and when she came back to herself, the prisoner had his hand locked around her throat, somehow putting pressure on her neck even through her armor.
In fact, if she hadn’t been Refined, she’d likely have lost consciousness before recovering from her soul-pain.
He knows human biology… That doesn't bode well. Even though she was conscious, something felt… off. But she needed to focus on her opponent, not whatever oddities were going on with herself.
He’d grown to fifteen feet tall, holding her even higher than that, well above his head as his voice echoed around her. “What are Warriors of Blood doing training a human? Why do you radiate the feel of arcane magics and methods? What—by rust, decay, and the unknowable reaches of time—has happened while I was trapped here? Speak or I will send you to the next world and ask another.”
Hey, he’s talking again. That’s good.
-Are you sure the lack of blood to your brain isn’t affecting you?-
Nah, I’m fine. This is totally okay. I’m funneling more power to my inscriptions to keep myself going. I’m sure it’s going to be just fine.
-...I’ll see if I can fix what’s being broken…-
His grip relaxed just enough for Tala to answer, if she’d needed to breathe to answer.
Alat’s fix seemed to take effect at a similar time, because Tala suddenly felt focused and fully cognizant once again. This wasn’t an ideal situation by any means, but she might be able to work with it, if she could keep her head on straight.
Toward that end, she amplified the void going to her armor, but whatever Reality based ability he had was pressing in close, solidifying and keeping the void-magic from harming his hand as he held her aloft.
Alright, then. Negotiations. She projected her voice outside of her helmet with her aura, “I will happily tell you whatever you want to know. It costs me nothing to tell you some of my story. How about you put me down?”
The prisoner blinked at her a few times, seemingly not having expected to actually receive an answer. “Why would you be willing to speak with me? Me, a prisoner here and an enemy of humanity?”
Before Tala could answer, she heard Alat hitch. -Attack from the side!-
Tala had momentarily lost focus on her three fold sight and now she was about to be speared from behind and to the side. She did not trust her armor to protect her. He knew about her defenses, and he was making this strike anyway.
Still, it wasn’t like she had an instant way to respond. She couldn’t flicker out of his grasp—she tried—so all that she could do was redouble the power going into her various defenses and void-magic aspect mirror.
In that instant, however, Terry was there, flickering into being between them and attacking the upraised arm with void-magic talons, even as a weapon he’d thrown knocked the incoming root-spear off course.
Terry clearly did not like Tala in that predicament, and he wasn’t about to let her be struck in such a way.
The arcane roared in anger even as he batted at the bird, trying to get him away with his off hand. Terry flickered back rather than taking the hit.
The arcane was irritated, but clearly still felt like he was in control. “I am Abridane, Lord of the World Wood, and I will have my answer. Unless your words were merely meant as a distraction?”
No, that’s what you were doing, you rusted piece of detritus. Tala didn’t of course, have time to actually articulate that. She didn’t actually know how Abridane had managed to say all of that so quickly.
Tala punched at the arm holding her with void-magic and anti-Leshkin magics in her glove, but he resisted the blunt hit with powers of his own.
At the same time, Terry had flickered back in, with void-magic raging along his talons once more.
Abridane seemed to have been preparing for just such an attack, because something hit Terry. It wasn’t physical in any sense of the word, but the results resonated within Tala’s chest like a collapsing mountain.
First, the eight bloodstars that Terry used for his threefold vision shattered, lacerating Tala’s soul further.
Then, Terry’s spirit—his very self—was ejected from his body, killing him instantly. Due to his soulbond with Tala, that spirit was pulled into close orbit around her own keystone, within her body, but that barely registered.
Terry was dead.
Terry was dead, and Tala had no time to truly process that fact.
I can bring him back. She tried to reassure herself even as she tried to position herself to swing Flow into the Mezzanni who’d killed him.
It didn’t help.
He had died trying to save her from this beast, and she hadn’t been able to prevent it.
A heartbeat later—with Terry’s magics gone—his body exploded.
Gore, blood, viscera, feather, bone, and all manner of other bodily pieces were suddenly far too close together for anything without magical assistance.
The result was a detonation seemingly like nothing so much as an avalanche of bodily components thrown forth with the power of a thunderbull’s charge.
Tala was ripped free of the hostile grip and thrown against the wall of the cell, just beside the tunnel out. Abridane was shredded as he lacked her armor to protect him from the tearing effect of the bones and other hard bits.
The vegetation around them was painted a chunky red.
She had a prolonged moment of panic at what had just happened.
Terry was dead.
Her mind, spirit, and very soul were all reeling from the fact.
Before she could sink too low, however, she felt the terror bird’s presence beside her.
He wasn’t back—that would take some doing, and she hadn’t had time to figure out how she would accomplish it—but his spirit was with her even now, bound to her soul.
So long as she lived, he was not truly dead despite the bloody evidence to the contrary.
His death had bought her freedom, and she hated that such had been required.
With that assurance, she was able to vault back to her feet, facing Abridane as he bore down upon her.
This thing had killed Terry.
This thing needed to pay.
Flow snapped into her hand, becoming a void-glaive even as she thrust forward, a yell on her lips.
Alat had not fallen into rage as Tala had. -Tala… that wasn’t a special attack he built up over time. He just… he just hit Terry with it.-
Even through her anger, that resonated as wrong to Tala. What do you mean? We’ve been seeing him build up something. Wasn’t that it?
-...Look for yourself?-
In that instant, Alat showed Tala what they’d been perceiving, and what had changed around the attack on Terry: Essentially nothing.
Oh… Oh, rust. Tala’s burning rage flashed to a bone deep cold as she realized that she likely didn’t have a defense against such an attack.
-Existence Shield?-
Tala did not like the idea of that, but it would be preferable to dying. It’s our best shot.
Abridane splintered into a wave of crashing vines, utterly avoiding the precise, powerful slashes she executed in an attempt to harm him. He then reformed just beside her.
Once again, he somehow spoke verbosely in an instant, his words hitting her at the same time as his attack, “Very well, I will ask another.”
Alat and Tala had already been working, folding Void, Magic, and Reality—via her armor—together into a powerful protection. Because of that, when the same power that had struck Terry so recently hit her, she weathered the blow.
But it was a weathering.
She felt battered and torn, like she’d somehow survived a swim in a volcano because she had a big enough icecube.
-That is an awful analogy.-
Really? Now?
Abridane seemed shocked that she was still standing, but that didn’t slow him, and in the next instant, he roared. Striking her again with the same power, a thousand fold more powerful than the little hits she’d taken before and easily three times more powerful than what she’d just resisted.
Even despite her aura’s attempt to dull it, despite her void-magics and Existence Shield, Reality slammed against her like the inevitable rising of the sun, and in that moment, her gate—her very soul—was knocked free from her body.
With a tearing sensation, more visceral than anything she had ever experienced, she felt her physical self be eviscerated as the soul which had been fused to it was forced out, her connection to her own body fully severed, as the world went entirely dark.