Chapter 211 - Tentacles and Ashes IV

Still chewing on a half dead arviad, Claire observed the pillar with a curious gaze. It was an obvious opening; she was too focused on the raging fire to pay the other combatants any attention, but none dared to enter her range. The bravest among them had already proven her scales impervious to their weapons, and the few left alive were baretaloned to begin with. It would not be incorrect to describe the survivors as cowards, but cowardice was not the only force that drove their retreat. Like the sacrificial lamb and the villagers that fled from her allies, they had pinned their hopes on the entity that emerged from within the flames.

The protector’s advent came with a moment of silence, its overbearing presence demanding the attention of all. Raw power radiated off its body, a mix of pinks and silvers that inspired the townsfolk to break into cheers of joy and relief. Claire, on the other hand, had her face twisted in disgust. The so-called divine protector was wrong in a way that sent shivers up her spine, spreading outwards from her shard and radiating through her frame, insects scurrying across her skin, or perhaps worms wriggling around beneath it.

It was precisely her discomfort that reminded her of another peculiarity. Her divinity was still present, all 138 points readily accounted for, but her shard had remained silent prior to the faker's arrival. Entering the temple’s grounds had failed to ignite the biting pain that typically accompanied a god’s domain. The discrepancy was due for an investigation, but she rid her mind of it and redirected her focus. It didn’t matter what the answers were. The enemy had already engaged.

The pink duck led with a magical barrage. It flapped its wings to forge undulating waves of fire, each a thick blanket of white. They grew larger as they ascended into the sky, but Claire was unbothered. She ignored the cozy embers and clasped her talons together. She crafted a lump of ice between her clawed fingers, forming not a spear, but a hefty anchor. The oddly-shaped bolt had no self-propelling properties, but its creator solved that particular problem with the application of brute force. She flung it straight at her target, its speed further boosted by a powerful vector.

The bird stomped a bright orange foot against the floor and twisted its body out of harm’s way, narrowly avoiding the massive weight that threatened to run it through. When it hit the ground behind her, it exploded, ballooning into a town-rending glacier. While the bird was able to escape the spell, it failed to evade the catgirl that followed. Lia dashed up from behind the duck and drove her blade into one of its wings. She dug her feet into the soil and went for a second attack, a quick stab to the chest, empowered by every muscle in her back.

There was a loud clang; the rapier was caught by a tentacle that erupted from the base of the duck’s neck and met it head on. The clamour was followed by a high-pitched whir as the spinning blade made an attempt to saw through the monster’s flesh, but it failed. The creature was every bit as tough as the catgirl’s metal.

Lia clenched her teeth and sacrificed five percent of her health. Strength flooded from her core, pumping through her body, giving her the edge required to rend even Farenlight’s scales. But it wasn’t enough. The mouth-tentacle remained perfectly solid. Only its owner was displaced, pushed a few steps back by the show of power.

Natalya immediately shifted gears and drew a rune with her blade. The enrage was nearly instant, but a wall of flame halted her advance before she could approach its caster. Meltys had crafted a barrier, a circular dome that walled off the party’s mage from the rest of its members.

Arciel was not afraid to lash out in spite of her vulnerability. Rising from the monster’s shadow, she commanded her umbral armies to seize the bird, but none were able to reach her. They were burned away before they could make contact, evaporated by firelight. She leveraged her blood magic next and crafted a stake covered in thorns. It nearly made contact, but the protector repelled it the same way it had repelled the catgirl’s sword.

Had the spell been fueled by more blood, the vampire likely would have won the clash, but Claire had eaten most of the corpses, and Natalya had refrained from producing them. She lacked the raw materials required to fully empower her spell.

A hand on her hat, the mage dove back into the shadows and darted away. But she was followed by a silver flame moving at twice her speed.

Matthias leapt through the barrier, inserted himself between them, and slashed at the fire, but he was unable to disperse it. When he failed his duty as the princess’ blade, he made himself into her shield instead, using his own flesh to guard her from harm. And in that, he was effective. He emerged from the initial blast only lightly charred, a quarter of his health depleted, and Arciel still pristine. But there was a problem. He was a mantis no longer, but a matchstick instead. Everything from his equipment to his carapace had gone up in flames.

He grabbed his flask and emptied its contents over his head whilst Arciel covered him in blood, but neither attempt produced any fruitful results. He continued to burn like a witch at the pyre.

“You cannot quench the primordial flames, villain.” The bird spoke as it—she—evaded another bolt of ice. Her voice was quiet, but filled with hatred and spite. “He will burn until he is dea—”

She was interrupted by a massive talon, a strike with enough power to cleave through the temple’s paved stone and expose the mushroom beneath it. She barely dodged; the tip of one of Claire’s talons caught the side of her face and took a clump of feathers. There was no blood; it was hardly a notable wound, but the bird narrowed her eyes regardless. She was sure that the wyrm had been covered in her embers. But none of them had stuck, let alone caused any harm.

Claire grabbed the burning mantis with her tail and hoisted him towards her shard. The ice bent to her will, transforming into a hand that grasped his body and neutered the protector’s raging fire. But though he was no longer burning, neither was he out of danger. Her stunt only worsened his condition; his extremities turned blue as his body shook and shivered. Matthias himself was completely unresponsive, his consciousness stolen by the bitter cold.

There was a brief moment of silence, an awkward lull that the combatants spent with their eyes upon the lyrkrian disaster.

“They’re quenched.” Eventually, Claire spoke, declaring her victory as she purged the rhiar from his glacial prison. He only suffered greater injuries when she grabbed him with her tail. His frozen wings shattered, and his face took another hit when she casually tossed him towards the squid behind her.

Another moment of awkward silence.

“To think you would murder your own allies. You are truly scum among scum.” The divine protector flapped her wings and produced five tentacles from each. The disgusting webbed fingers held decks of wooden talismans, charms engraved with runes, powerful runes, oozing the same silvery aura as the duck herself.

They arranged themselves in the air when she threw them, forming a large ring, a thicket of sweltering flame that burned far brighter than the spells she had unleashed from her wings. Claire was finally beginning to feel a slight hint of discomfort, a faint reminder of the time she had spent wandering through a volcano.

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Arciel did not fare as well as the lyrkress. She was panting heavily, her face twisted in pain, and her body changing, dyeing itself a mix of faint blues and bright reds. Claire glanced at her for a moment before magically grabbing her and throwing her over the fire. One of the talismans moved to intercept, but she spun it around with a vector and redirected its flame towards its caster.

“Take the cat and leave.”

She moved as she spoke, dodging out of the way of the charging bird. Like the lyrkress, the protector had not waited for her to finish speaking before beginning her assault.

Meltys led with a kick. She jumped into the air and sucked her legs in before suddenly releasing them. They shot forward like springs, stretching to over a dozen times their previous length. Claire took the attack head on. She didn’t find it particularly painful. The protector was not strong enough to push her back, and her scales were too thick for the hooks on the duck’s flippers to pierce her skin.

She was, however, met with an inconvenience when the rest of the waterfowl’s body snapped to her paddles. It began pecking at her neck, lashing out with tentacles that threatened to sneak under her scales. The duck had free reign to strike wherever it pleased. The scalewarden, on the other hand, was unable to reach her foe.

Her arms were too stubby. Her tail was the only thing she could use, and the duck had no trouble avoiding it. Meltys ran along the qiligon’s frame, using the barbs on her feet to make sure she never fell, even when upside down. Claire attempted to rip the bird apart with a powerful pair of vectors, but her body refused to shatter. Tearing her away was just as unsuccessful. Meltys was anchored perfectly to her scales.

Claire was only able to slip away by shrinking to her humanoid form. She landed on a nearby roof with her wings still extended and raised a hand to summon Boris. Through their link, she could feel the lizard’s attempts at responding, but he never appeared in her hands. Something was getting in his way, impeding the teleportation process before his coordinates could cement.

The protector charged the moose again before she could retrieve her weapon and slashed with a massive blade, a talisman turned flaming sword the size of a man. Claire met the spell with one of her own, a spear made of ice, but her creation crumbled at first contact. The searing edge melted through its blade and effortlessly cleaved it in two before moving on to threaten her face.

Claire ducked under the attack and struck at the bird with an axe formed midswing. It was made of a thicker material. The air around it crackled, with bits and pieces freezing and dropping to the ground. It had taken her not the standard hundred mana that it cost to make a spear, but a full five thousand.

She stared at the bird as she swung, but it shrugged off her paralysis and intercepted her axe with its blade. The fiery claymore lost the second engagement, extinguished by the bitter cold, but when she cleaved at the bird’s flesh, she found her weapon melted again. Every bit of ice that came in contact with the duck was completely obliterated, converted to a violent explosion of steam that sent them both tumbling away. Claire was the first to recover, but not the first to attack. A dozen talismans turned towards her and unleashed a barrage of fireballs.

The lyrkress swept them aside with her vectors before they could make contact and, without rising from the ground, changed her form again. She morphed only her lower body and slithered towards the bird with her tongue flicking through the air. Driven by her forces and her fully spread wings, she practically flew across the ground, crashing into the duck with a fresh pair of weapons.

Headhydra’s horns were much deadlier than her creations. Both held true as they dug into the arviad’s chest. Meltys thrashed as they sank further into her flesh, flapping her wings and kicking her legs. There was a sizzling sound every time the two combatants made contact. Wherever the bird touched, Claire’s flesh would inexplicably melt, but she bore with it and kept pushing, digging the weapons deep into the other fighter’s ribs. She let go after twisting them, and drew another pair of blades. The second set, she jabbed into the bird’s throat. The blood that spilled was even hotter than her body’s exterior. A single drop melted one of the lyrkress’ fingers, reducing it to nothing but clear blue bone. It was an agonising pain, worse than wrapping her fingers around fresh balls of lava. She wanted to scream at the top of her lungs, but she was too busy focusing on an even greater source of torment. For her second attack had been met with violent retaliation. The bird had opened its beak and shot its tongue through her gut.

Her insides were instantly turned to ash.

But so too was the tentacle destroyed. It crumbled when it touched her spine, its entire length freezing, cracking, and turning to dust.

Ten more tentacles moved to take its place, but Claire escaped into the sky with a flap of the wings and assumed her true form before the bird could follow. Taking a deep breath and ballooning her chest to three times its usual girth, she unleashed a breath across the village.

Combatants and civilians alike were caught in its wake, robbed of their lives in equal measure. Their dying wails restored her missing flesh. Their buildings collapsed and turned to rubble. Their livestock and fields were ravaged, turning their hope for the coming seasons to dread and despair. In just one attack, she had completely wiped the settlement off of the map.

Power coursed through Claire’s body as she basked in the destruction. Corpus imperium filled her with a newfound might. For the first time since her ascension, she had wreaked enough havoc to trigger its passive effect. Everything had been doubled. She felt twice as strong, twice as fast, and twice as durable. Her muscles pulsed with magic, even as she returned to her humanoid form. But the tides were unchanged.

When she charged at Meltys and slashed at her with another pair of blades, she found her hands once again destroyed by the arviad’s searing blood. A single attack mangled them both, fusing their flesh and charring their skin. The bird’s retaliation, on the other hand, proved much more successful. Unlike the lyrkress, she did more damage to the enemy than she did to herself. Only two of the tentacles disintegrated. The rest were still pristine.

Leaping backwards to dodge another tentacled assault, Claire magically seized the six weapons embedded within the bird’s flesh and tore them through her body. Using them like the talismans, which had only continued barfing flames in her direction, she ran them through the bird over and over, but the success she saw was minimal.

Quacking angrily, the duck crossed her arms and unleashed a magical nova, a blast of flame that went in every direction, melting a hole in the mountain atop which the town was built.

Claire backed off far enough to escape its radius, but her weapons were deleted by the magical assault. All six of Farenlight’s seemingly indestructible horns were evaporated to dust.

The blast was accompanied by a change in the bird. Her heart had caught fire. It was obvious even without the window carved into her chest. The organ had suddenly burst into a pure white flame, one that glowed even brighter than the sun.

It was the origin of the fire mage’s magic, the primordial flame that burned all of creation. An elemental power source just like her shard. Every single one of the hundred talismans spread through the arena closed in on Claire and unleashed a wave of flames. She turned most of them away, but some managed to land. And those that did seared her with the same agony as the bird’s skin.

Her tail was turned to dust, her arms were charred, and her wings were riddled with holes. She repaired herself by creating patches and prosthetics of ice, but it became evident, sooner rather than later, that remaining on the defense would not be sustainable. Attacking was not any better. She had only two horns left, Boris was still missing, and everything else in her arsenal had gone up in flames.

Clenching the one fist she still had, she folded her wings around her body and turned them into shields as she channeled a full hundred points of divinity through her throat. Her newest organs flared to life, glowing golden before she unleashed the attack full force. Meltys opened her eyes wide, but shielded herself with a burst of primordial flame, fueled by the sickly divine energy concentrated in her heart.

The two raw elements clashed. But Claire did not stick around for long enough to take note of the result. She turned away while her opponent repelled the breath, assumed her true form, and retreated with haste.

The bird would see death.

But it would have to be on another day.