Chapter 217 - Tentacles and Ashes IX

Arciel was the first to strike. Her tattoos as bright as the moon, she pointed her staff at the bird and commanded a wave of shadows to swallow her. Flames erupted from Meltys’ core and obliterated the attack, just as they had during their first encounter. But they were barely effective.

Because it was no longer the middle of the day.

A second wave surged to replace the first, followed by a third, and a fourth, and a fifth. Beneath the moonlight, there was no limit to the amount of darkness at the mage’s beck and call, and the fire did her target no good. For though the flickering flames were bright, they inevitably cast more shadows than they destroyed.

Lia dug her feet into the ground and joined the assault with a shout. Already knowing that her opponent was powerful, she pulled none of her punches and drew upon the full extent of her might. She consumed a quarter of her health as she ripped her blade through the air, its tip whistling as it cut down everything, everything in her path.

The table was turned to scrapwood.

The building was rent in two.

The plateau was carved into a slippery slope.

The bird had tried to dodge out of the way, but even delayed by the compatibility between wielder and weapon, she found herself on the receiving end of the savage strike. It tore through her shoulders, cleaved through her bones, twisted through her lungs.

A wave of shadows filled the fresh holes in her body, tearing at her flesh and turning her blood against her. They bought just enough time for the cat to prepare a pair of runes. One, she drew with her tail, an inscription to trade her sanity for power, while the other she carved into the bird’s body—the mark of false stasis, her ars magna.

Claire leapt behind the bird, swinging Boris as she passed. The lizard’s edge flashed through the night, cutting everything from the waterfowl’s chest to the bottom of her bill. Flames surged from the wounds, firing the shrine’s clay walls, but he was impenetrable, completely unharmed by the blazing inferno.

The lyrkress nulled her momentum with a flap of the wings as she spun around for a second strike, but a powerful eruption burst from within the duck’s body. The billowing flame swelled, forcing all three of the duck’s challengers to escape the burning building. Claire fired a beam from her free hand and threw a block of ice with her tail, but neither attack made it past the flaming veil.

The damaged parts of Meltys’ body were replaced by her piercing white flames. Her bones, her feathers, and her flesh were all seamlessly turned from pink to white. The damage done was not by any means negligible, but the divine protector’s face never warped with pain. She wore only an annoyed frown throughout, quacking angrily without a hint of panic or confusion. Her attention was spent not on her enemies, but the shrine and those that lay within it. There were two panicked ducks sitting in one of the freshly exposed rooms, both of whom had been protected by a wall of wooden talismans and a floating metal shield.

After confirming their safety, the firehawk rose into the sky whilst scattering a second batch of talismans. They were placed all around the grounds, thrown into place to form a dome around the battlefield. The thousand wooden structures attacked in turn, spewing jet after jet of pure white flame.

The cat paid no mind to the incoming projectiles as she flew across the grounds, leaping from point to point with none of her usual finesse. She moved on all fours, pouring all her strength through her limbs with every bound. The spells that she could not avoid were parted by the blade in her mouth, still burning as they fell upon her surroundings. She did not always catch the bird, but whenever she did, she would cut straight through her body, leaving a bloody gash that would soon cauterise itself as a line of fire.

Arciel did not jump into combat as she had before. Standing far behind the catgirl, she lowered herself to her knees and clasped her hands together. Her eyes remained fixed on the moon as she muttered a prayer to her goddess. Her tattoos grew brighter with every word she spoke, lighting up the darkness like the beacon that held her worship.

Meltys swarmed the priestess with her flames, but Claire stepped between them before she could interrupt her chant. Boris cut right through the fire, just as Natalya’s rapier had before him.

It was after thirty seconds of chanting that the prayer finally bore fruit. A beam of light rained down from the moon. Its tracking was perfect, impossible to dodge even as it turned from an indicator to a powerful attack a thousand times brighter than any pure flame.

Meltys raised her wings and charged them both with divine power, but the piercing lunar ray burned past her defenses, searing her feathers and boiling her skin. Both limbs were completely obliterated, leaving not a bone behind, but the rest of the bird remained even as the light faded. Her limbs returned as flames, but she was never given the chance to confirm their function.

The swordsman leapt from a building’s roof as the bird made a bid for the skies, pinning her down and overpowering her with her blade. Every defense that the bird put up was swept aside and punished with a slash. None of the wounds were particularly deadly, but many were deep enough to expose the bone, until they were covered with fire.

The duck dug her paddles into the ground as she emitted another nova, a massive blast of fiery energy that forced the cat to fall back. The second explosion came with a high-pitched whirr, followed by a change in the ambient temperature. It rose rapidly, one, two, thirty degrees, turning the plateau into a boiling sauna.

Natalya was largely unaffected, only breaking into sizzling sweat, but Arciel was not as resistant. Her flesh began turning red. Even with the moon goddess’ protection, she was unable to resist the heat. The bird made an attempt to finish her by throwing her fiery sword, but both the target and its murder-weapon-to-be were displaced by vectors. One was turned towards a wall, while the other was thrown out the front gate.

The weapon’s loss had little effect on the holy arviad. Meltys wreathed her whole body in flames and tore at the berserker with five different tentacles, two from her wings, two from under her legs, and one from the inside of her mouth. They danced through the air like whips, striking the cat and burning through her slender frame. Her body was not as quick to yield as either of her allies’, and it fully regenerated when she enraged again. But while her flesh could see itself rapidly restored, her armour was in tatters. Much of it had already turned to ash, and the few pieces that remained left her in a state that could hardly be described as decent.

A lack of armour did nothing to stop the catgirl from proceeding with utmost violence. She cut and slashed and slashed and cut, taking hits to land her own as only a berserker could. Her sword was constantly juggled between her hands and her mouth as she delivered blow after deadly blow. By the third time she enraged, the attacks were already heavy enough to completely ignore Meltys’ attempts at defense. Everything she used to guard was cleaved right through, be it flesh or flame.

The catgirl led with her sword, but her claws were just as lethal, the invisible astral blades that had come with her second ascension tore the bird apart, leaving large gashes even as her hands appeared to fall short.

Claire joined the fray after one such attack. She landed with her talons extended, crushing them into the duck’s exposed back. Once again, it was the lyrkress’ body that gave when they touched. The flesh melted off her bones. But her skeleton refused to burn. With it, she ripped through the fire and destroyed her victim’s spine. Wherever she touched, the duck’s body crumbled, turning from flesh to ice, and ice to dust.

Boris was much more successful. Like Natalya’s weapon, he cut straight through her skull, carving her head in twain without suffering the retaliation that plagued his master.

The bird crumbled beneath their combined weight, her body seemingly broken. The wounds she sustained were certainly mortal, and Claire’s ice had even quenched some of the otherwise eternal flames bursting from the bird’s core.

Still, she rose. Meltys swept a tentacle towards Claire’s underside and forced her to back away before making a mad dash for the sky. The whirring sound grew louder, and her heat more intense as her body was once again restored in a burst of blinding fire.

Natalya’s sixty second timer ended halfway through the healing process. An uncountable number of magical slashes obliterated every last inch of flesh that remained. The powerful blows ate away at Meltys’ structure, dulled her flames and ripped her heart to a mess of inexplicable bits. But no log entry followed. She still refused to die, reforming out of nothing, around a glimmering, silver pendant.

It was during the second regeneration process that she bolstered her offense. The talismans swirling around them lit and merged, turning into a storm of lances that threatened to swallow halfbreed and cat alike. Claire spread her arms and crafted a barrier of ice, but her defenses failed to hold. The burning wood punched right through shield and flesh in turn.

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Lia healed some of her wounds by sinking deeper into madness, but the torrential flames were relentless. The spell continued to assault them, over and over, leaving no room for retaliation. Claire threw up a second barrier after her rear legs were seared and charged it with her divinity, converting it to an igloo of true ice. But even that was incapable of fully warding off the flames. The holy energy in her element was slowly drained as contact continued. It began to turn, to change back to its fragile, mortal, meltable state.

Gritting her teeth, Claire dashed towards the temple’s front door. She opened a hole in her barrier as she did and threw the injured cat at a miffed-looking fox before sucking what was left of the shield’s divinity back into her body. She funneled it, and another twenty points, into a small iceborn dagger, and cut apart the flaming pillar giving chase.

With its divine force spread over a smaller area, the ice held true, retaining its shape as she came to a sliding stop beyond the shrine’s walls. But while its form was unchanged, hers was not. She turned humanoid as she regained her footing. The damage that plagued her talons was transferred to the soles of her feet; they were without skin, muscle or blood, but the nerve endings were certainly still present, complaining with all the volume of a lost child. Claire ignored the pain and imitated her foe by growing out her skeleton. More ice to substitute the missing flesh. Her runecloak morphed as well. She kept her breastplate, but the rest of the metal was turned to leather to better supplement her mobility. It was of a much darker colour, something that would let her blend in with the misty woods.

While the cervitaur regained her footing, the bird rose higher into the air and chanted a spell of caws and quacks. She gathered not only magic, but divinity in such excess that Claire considered and dismissed an emergency escape. It contained over a hundred times the lyrkress’ total. The pure, silvery energy warped the world around it as it manifested, completely distorting the sky that lay beyond Meltys’ outstretched wings. The stars swirled out of position, warping into a sneer. The moon turned hazy, losing its hat as it was turned to lines of smog. Even the bird herself became unclear, her flames growing, shrinking, twisting and turning with every blink.

The talismans continued assailing the lyrkress as the fire mage gathered her power, leaving her hardly any room to think. Claire ducked under one searing blast and cut through another before flapping her wings and diving for the protector’s newly formed body. She was no longer a being of flesh, functioning as an avian only in shape. Her trinket-shaped heart aside, she was made entirely of a brilliant primordial flame.

It was at said heart that the lyrkress aimed. She fired a beam from her chest as she twisted her dagger into a reverse grip and plunged it towards the bird’s core. She was on track to destroy the silver pendant, but a shield—the one that had previously guarded the divine protector’s family—flew from the half-destroyed building and planted itself between them.

When the blade failed to pierce the bulwark’s defenses, the lyrkress responded by bashing it with Boris. He switched forms when he found himself unable to damage it, turning into a heavy mallet that weighed over a thousand pounds midswing, only to find the shield still pristine. When the brute force approach proved unsuccessful, the lyrkress zipped past the bird and slashed at her back, but again, her attacks were deflected.

She narrowed her eyes before throwing Boris overhead. A vector reversed his momentum and spun his blade towards the shrine maiden’s neck. In the meantime, she engaged with her dagger, charging straight ahead. It was a two-pronged attack, perfectly timed so the two would land in tandem. And a two-pronged failure. The defensive implement split in half and blocked both the stabs. She pushed her dagger and pulled her lizard, but neither was able to make the shield budge.

Each time it was struck, the relic oozed a green mist, spreading into their surroundings a noxious poison that ate away at everything but the fire. For the first time since his ascension, Boris suffered visible damage. His blade melted. And he plummeted to the ground.

He began to regenerate as he hit the dirt, but Claire did not call him back into her empty hand. She grabbed the shield instead and made an effort to push it out of her way. It saw no trouble resisting her. But she was unbothered; its displacement was not her aim. She wove her dagger past it and struck at the bird’s neck. The seemingly sentient object made an attempt to split in two, but she stole its mana before it could, disrupting the magical phenomenon for just long enough to finally reach her target.

Her aim was true.

But her ice was melted.

The dagger vanished when it touched the arviad’s body, disappearing without so much as a chance to turn to steam.

Claire pressed on nonetheless and struck with her hands. She continued pushing forward even as the limb was painfully stripped down to its icy bones, plunging it deeper and deeper towards the divine protector’s core. The other horror’s heart was in her grasp. Right between her naked fingers.

She ordered them to grasp it, to crush it to bloody bits. But she was unable.

It was right then, right before she delivered the killing blow, that Meltys’ spell was finally completed.

The mage unleashed a giant pillar of fire. It stemmed from the core that Claire had nearly taken and completely obliterated her hand. Even her skeleton gave, and not because her divinity was drained. Her body was not like the imitations she crafted. Still, it was melted, burned by an excess of heat that caused the very air to ignite and explode.

She backed away in a hurry, assumed her true form, and curled herself up in a ball. But even cloaked in her divinity, she suffered. Her prided hair was turned to ash, her ears were completely removed, and her lips were fused shut. Her beautiful scales were burnt, charred, discoloured, with many turning to dust.

There was nothing left of her eyes. They had been destroyed twice over, once by the burst of blinding light, and again by the inferno that followed. But she was not denied the ability to see. More eyes sprung up all over her body, revealing a world purified by a cleansing flame.

The shrine and its surroundings were gone, the only bits still present were protected by barriers cast by either the invasive fox, or the self-proclaimed god herself. The peak had melted away into a deep, boiling caldera, appearing more like a volcano than it did a giant slab of rock. None of the trees were left, and even the snow that had previously crowned the mountain’s midsection was gone with the wind. The air was noxious, filled with ash and distorted by a dazzling heat haze.

Nothing but pure rampant destruction, caused by an incarnate of flame.

It was almost like Meltys really was a god, an avatar of fire that brought irrevocable death. A statement all but confirmed by the action that followed. Because, despite unleashing an attack powerful enough to desecrate an ecosystem, she was already preparing another. The very same words were being chanted. The very same power was being gathered inside her again. But there could not be a second blast. The lyrkress could not allow it.

A quick glance in the duck’s direction confirmed that her previous strategy was no longer valid. The shield had broken into a hundred different parts, circling her foe at high speed.

There was no choice but to draw the last trick she had in the hat.

So she did.

Claire closed her eyes, grabbed the space in front of her, and invoked it with a twist.

The air chilled, starting around her, and quickly spreading through the magmatic arena. Large chunks of ice formed in the air, hovering in place like tiny Cadrian castles.

They were like the bones that the protector had stolen. All of them were true. Even without a divine charge.

The scenery began to warp as the temperature fell and fell and fell. The ground appeared beneath their feet, accompanied by emerald green spruces, their bristles covered in snow. There soon blew a storm, a gentle breeze that affected not only their pocket of reality, but the dungeon in its entirety. It grew as the seconds passed, its winds turning more violent as more snow fell from the sky. Before long, the petite flurry became a blizzard, an all-encompassing wave of ice and snow.

It felt like the scene had taken an eternity to form. Because time itself had nearly been frozen, crawling along at only a fraction of its usual speed.

The bird called upon her talismans in an attempt to burn it all away. But Claire ignored her efforts. Her fire failed to melt the winter, and the volcanic blast she eventually unleashed was just as ineffective. The primordial flame surged from her body, only to be dampened by the bitter storm.

Had it been a weaker ars magna, like the willow in the western wind, it surely would have broken. Such distortions were inherently weak to powerful bursts of magic, their forms carefully woven of the fabric of the world.

But Claire’s was nothing of the sort.

For a simple distortion did not a racial signature make.

What her concept did instead was rewrite the rules wherever the snow fell. To make the cold, the irreversible glaciation of all, the one eventuality that lay at the end of the road.

Such was fate, within the realm of eternal frost.

Every snowflake Meltys touched sapped her health, her mana, her divinity, her speed, her strength, and her stamina. All of it trended towards zero, one tiny tick at a time.

Had she truly been fire incarnate, a god presiding over an element like she so claimed, she would have been able to break free.

But she was no god.

She was a faker. A false prophet that relied on outside powers.

Now that the bird was trapped in her realm, Claire finally understood. It was never Meltys that was divine. It was her heart. The trinket was an artifact that provided her with an unnatural brand of heavenly energy. And it was that to which the lyrkress had always reacted.

It disgusted her.

She hated it.

So she moved it towards its destination.

But while certainly distorted, the pendant’s divinity was anything but artificial. There was still an object of worship, an entity with more recognition than faith, offered to it through tens of thousands of years of isolation. The device whirred to life and shook its everfrost cage. But it could not escape Claire’s blade.

She summoned Boris as she waded through the storm. He was held between her teeth, turned to a sword for the final blow.

Meltys squeezed out one final attack, a beam that flew from within the frozen flame. But Claire dodged it with a twist of the head.

It did no damage.

But by stalling her, even momentarily, it more than paid its due.

The storm faded away. The icy terrain melted right as Claire slashed at the protector’s chest, vanishing as if it had never been.

Because the lyrkress was out of mana.