Ready Or Not (5)
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I raised an accusing finger and settled it on the snarky creature smiling at us.
“Aim for her mana core.” I said aloud.
As soon as I mentioned that a hint of shock flashed across her face. With an obvious glimmer of malice in her eyes, Nephthys cautiously took one step back.
“You can see her core?” Myra gasped intuitively.
“Yeah, it's in her upper abdomen, that’s what she’s been using to heal her body.”
“Well...it doesn’t look like you’re lying or joking around this time so I suppose it’s worth a shot. Jytte, I assume you have your own little stunt to pull?”
“Something like that....but....the opening move...all depends on you. Don’t you dare miss Myra.”
The Faerie couldn’t help but let out a small chuckle. She didn’t respond but the surge of mana seeping from her core was enough of a reply in its own way.
Now that I was finally staring one of these things down, this entire little scheme was slowly starting to unravel. These things, the irregulars were simply evil spirit clusters that escaped from Limbo and were granted corpses to possess thereafter – Mage corpses to be exact.
The reason that cult was so hell bent on attracting all these lower ranked raiders to this place must have been to either feed their souls to these things or acquire new bodies for them to possess.
In terms of sheer quality, the soul of a mage was far more potent and more appetizing when compared to a regular human's soul. Not just that but these irregulars couldn’t possess normal human bodies — Well, strictly speaking they could inhabit one, but only for very brief periods of time.
Possessing a normal human corpse wouldn’t even allow them to exist here for a full minute.
However, it was different with a mage.
Mages had awakened mana cores, which essentially served as vessels for their souls. Irregulars, on the other hand, were clusters of thousands of souls held together by the strongest will among them.
Once summoned into this world, an Irregular could possess a mage's corpse, provided the mana core within it was powerful enough to bear the burden of housing such a multitude of souls.
The stronger the core, the more capable it was of sustaining the chaotic amalgam, allowing the Irregular to reanimate the body in a rudimentary way — Kind of like maneuvering a puppet from the inside.
They hadn’t fully come back to life though; it was more like they were ‘pretending to be alive.’
In theory, it was a simple idea but there was one other crucial flaw in this plan. An irregular has no life force, so when they get pulled over to this dimension, the world itself starts rejecting them, causing the cluster to immediately begin evaporating.
Normally, it was just a matter of allowing them to burn through that stockpile of souls before dealing the final blow but here, things were different. If the irregulars attempted to possess a corpse the usual way, they still wouldn’t last very long, which is why a catalyst was needed.
In order to prolong their existence, they needed something that could supply the corpses mana core with an enormous amount of life force and allow them to freely animate the body without evaporating.
On this continent, only one thing could ever provide that level of sustenance — A rune.
Whatever was in these things had enough life force to support an entire cluster of evil spirits and allow them to freely exist in this dimension. However, that supply of life force didn’t seem to be unlimited, given enough time it would eventually whittle down, especially in Nephthys's case.
Just going off a rough estimate, she had consumed around 100,000 other souls during her time in limbo. Because of that, the life force she was receiving from the rune was perpetually being shared with every other soul housed in her mana core. That was the key to her current existence, so if that core was somehow damaged then the tables should turn in our favor.
“What a surprise. I wasn’t expecting to hear such a thing all the way out here, especially not from you, child.”
“Ha! Liam you’re onto something kid! Looks like you’re not immortal after all.” Myra exclaimed impudently.
With another slur of words, she once again willed the moisture in the atmosphere to morph and condense into her desired shape. This time, rather than spikes, they hardened into thin, spear-like constructs that resembled harpoons.
Glistening pristinely under the gentle moonlight, each of Myra’s meter long blades tilted downwards at a slight arch, pointed at the ready. Their target frowned slightly at the sight and furiously slashed her vibrating strands against the floor in a wide arc around her.
She must have desperately wanted to rush in for the kill but, doing so when we knew her weakness was a bad idea. All of a sudden it seemed as if she was slowly being backed into a corner — Or at least what was left of it.
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“Look at you...lashing out like that. I thought you weren’t in a rush...” Breathless words came from Jytte, broken and disjointed, yet they still simmered the frustration of our foe.
Quickly suppressing the slight scrunch forming on her face, she smiled.
“Don’t get carried away. You three are certainly a peculiar bunch but this changes nothing. Your information is useless if you can’t take advantage of it.” She hissed at us scornfully. “And to make sure it stays that way; I’ve decided to take on the liberty of eliminating you all as quickly as possible.”
“Well then....” Jytte replied with a grunt, righteously clutching the metal looking recurve bow in her remaining hand. “I guess we’ll just have to see who dies first!”
Her determination flared as she stomped on the ground and gave her body a vicious full turn. The motion was clockwise, causing the half-filled quiver slung across her shoulder to swirl around behind her from the sudden shift.
Arrows clattered against each other, the sound echoing in the still air as she pivoted to face her opponent — Who had already pounced the moment she made her move.
On her face was a raw expression, one that was hard to describe.
The only word that came to mind was “Psychotic.”
In response, Myra gave a magical order.
About half of her icicle spears shot towards Nephthys on command. Once again, the revenant attempted to weave through what she could, slicing and slashing along the way but these tapered spears were moving about twice as fast as the last batch of blades Myra had manifested.
Nephthys didn’t halt her advance but crimson splatters were occasionally being ejected from her punctured body. By the time Myra’s initial volley had finished her dash had only brought her within ten or so steps of Jytte, just as she was on the cusp of finishing her third twirl.
Once she finally achieved a 360 degree angle, she killed her momentum and allowed her arm to extended. The dangling quiver slung across her shoulder fell prone to the effects of inertia and continued on its trajectory, slipping from her grasp in a motion so smooth it could even be called graceful.
But before she completely lost physical contact with the leather sack, she gave it one final command. It was a term I was used to hearing by now, but this time it had a twist, she said:
“FULL ENCHANT!”
In response, the quiver glowed with an ethereal light before bursting open to reveal a dozen or so metal looking arrows swiveling towards their target. They were only moving a bit faster than the quiver itself so there was hardly any change in their speed.
Thanks to that, it wasn’t very difficult for Nephthys to swipe her hands around and cut them all to pieces. She stomped past the rain of metal debris with a grin wide enough to touch her ears, however, that expression quickly faded as soon as she’d gotten in another three steps.
The fragments of Jytte’s arrows finally made contact with the wooden floor, but rather than a faint clanking noise, they clattered against the floorboards like a rain of iron balls. Our footing couldn’t withstand the sudden distribution of weight, not after all the attacks that had previously been thrown around in here and as a result of that, the section of the floor behind her began crumbling away.
With a snapping sound, the timber section beneath Nephthys crackled and popped like a series of sharp thunderbolts. The floorboards she had previously been stomping so hard on sprang up from the force of enchanted iron debris, disrupting her balance and causing her to tumble backward as she was en route to pounce on us.
“Gotcha!” Jytte asserted vigorously before clamping down on an arrow with her teeth and performing yet another monstrous leap off the ground.
“You’re up Myra!” Her muffled voice beamed down from above.
Then, with a simple gesture from her hand, Myra maneuvered her arrows to reposition themselves. This time, they rose even further up into the air, arching at a 45 degree angle and darting towards the woman falling to her doom.
Seconds before impact, Nephthys somehow managed to perform a well-timed somersault, leaping off the springing floorboard before kicking off what little remained of a nearby wall.
“No way!” Myra blurted out in shock.
At this point, the majority of her icicle spears had already missed their mark, puncturing nothing but the quaking timber before us.
On the other hand, Nephthys was now mid-flight and she had a clear path towards her targets. Once in range, one clean slash of those vibrating braids was all she needed to get the job done.
That would have been the case if she didn’t have one last thing to worry about — The Archer in the air.
My head jutted back as I stared up in awe.
Jytte, despite her handicap, had somehow managed to get a lock on her target with nothing but a remarkable display of skill. She soared above us, clutching the metal recurve bow in her remaining hand and using her right leg to press against its lower limb.
Her gritted teeth held an arrow within, one that was already nocked on the bowstring. From here, it seemed as if a bead of blood was trickling down her chin — Likely from the immense strain on her jaws.
“Myra get clear!!” she exclaimed
A spherical dome of water suddenly coalesced around my body just as the Faerie began her frantic retreat, pulling my unmoving gaze along in the process. She made a strange whistling sound with her mouth, one that served a rather significant purpose.
The little mana Jytte had left in her body swiftly flowed into the nocking arrow, and just as before, she muttered that familiar word with one slight adjustment: “FULL ENCHANT!”
Right before impact, I saw an expression of utter shock spawn on Nephthys’ face. At this distance she was stuck halfway between her target and any possible escape route. Unsurprisingly, it was too late for her to do anything but gawk at the one-armed archer.
Jytte gave her opponent a strained smile, one that was stained with spite.
With a hint of malice in her eyes, she zealously released her gnashing grip on the glinting projectile. Eager to launch, it deviously slipped through the rows of her gritted teeth.
Her attack sliced through the air like a cannon, cutting a path of devastation towards its target. The enchanted arrow found purchase less than a second later, slamming into its objective with a thunderous sound.
The inn quaked from the impact, its timber frame shuddering as if the very bones of the building were rattled by the force — Which in fact they were — Soon after the collision, splintered wood and debris flew in all directions, drifting off on the winds of destruction as a large section of the resilient lodging collapsed in on itself.