The fight was on the moment Elia stepped into his range. A quick backstep saved her from a knee-breaking swing. Despite its massive momentum, it was redirected all too soon into a one-two thrust. His gun club didn’t have a spear tip, which meant that instead of stabbing through her, it would have just caved in her ribcage. Of course, he’d have to hit first. Elia wasn’t going to make it as easy as the last time.
Rye meanwhile was flinging small snowballs and hailstone javelins, keeping up the pressure as Mouggen and Karla closed in. The duo hit the hulking figure from disparate angles, but beneath a flowy robe his armored plates were as thick as anyone’s. Partlight, so his name, was dressed somewhere in between a monk, a crusader, and the pope himself. His left arm was completely unarmored though, besides a chain of beads that had to be special in some way, possibly a magical focus.
He rebuffed the assault either way, but it was brute force mixed with practiced deflection that ruled his style. Mouggen was pushed back, but Karla remained steadfast.
Spear of the Pontibat. Not an empty title, but not a telling one either. Was he their foremost champion? Their general? Elia didn’t even know exactly what the pontibat was besides some sort of religious organization.
Actually, she could check. Who ever said [Psychometry] wouldn’t work against worn and wielded items? She put it to the test as he turned on a swivel, bashing her backwards as he pointed his gun club at Karla.
“Rye!” she yelled, as a stream of hailstone snowballs flew unerringly towards his head. His shot went wide, leaving only the psychological impact of having been on the spicy end of gunfire for the first time on Karla’s face. “Good initiative!”
Th-thanks!
And lucky for her, she’d managed to snag the smoldering tip of the weapon as she was pushed back.
Dragonfire Handgonne
A mixture of a massive iron club and a weapon from distant lands. A terrifying weapon, and the symbol of office for the greatest mortal champion under the twelve gods. It never seems to run out of powder.
Greatest mortal champion. That couldn’t be good. She could believe it too, even as a dreg he was handily dealing with Mouggen and Karla at the same time.
When Elia joined the fray, she didn’t have a thought to waste. It was just stab and block, parry, twist and counter. Jump and roll. Dodge, dodge, dodge again until there was a fiery pain in her feet, until her breath burned and rasped against lingering stone dust, until her hands felt numb and distant as they flowed through the air and never seemed to hit true.
He could bleed, that much was proven when Mouggen deflected a blow and riposted with a slash that should have sliced clean through Partlight’s hands, but only scored a gash along his forearm.
In response, he blasted them all away with a thundering explosion of soot and dark smoke. His bracelet of beads glowed in the twilight, before sucking them all back in. She knew it, he did know some form of magic or he had a boon. Her joy as he revealed another of his cards was cut short when he disarmed Karla and punched Mouggen in the face, shattering his mask.
He had cool, blue eyes. And a sharp face. A part of her would have liked to know more about the man, but she snuffed out that Rye-part and renewed her fervor.
It was not enough. There was no way people like these were meant to be fought and defeated by mortals like her, even undead. The gulf was too great, the challenge unfair, the risk of death after the tiniest of positioning mistakes absolute.
But some part of her reveled in it. Frustration was part of her everyday experience. Here? The strain was up past eleven, but it was all bundled, neatly wrapped into one, unreasonably punishing foe. He would not be the final one, but she’d feel so much better when he was dead. And she was gaining on him, inch by inch. At this point, if he went easy on her, it would be disappointing.
The boss staggered back on one knee, but didn’t look like he’d ever fall. He slammed his gun club into the ground, pushing himself back up. In his empty offhand, he conjured a sword, a broad, two-hander for any other person, but one he wielded as easily as a dagger.
The music reached yet a new height, spelling ‘danger, danger, danger’.
“Oh hey. Second phase already.”
Just like the man himself the sword was broken, its blade snapped along the middle. However, as he slashed at her with it, Elia came to know why he was called Partlight. A crescent blade of blueish-purple light crossed the span between them in a heartbeat, and cut her in two.
You have died
You have lost–
Elia shook awake, feeling her chest. No damage to her armor. As if the slash had gone straight through. “That music was good. Great even. Nothing like frantic violins and an epic orchestral suite to get that blood pumping.”
Are you doing alright, Elia?
“I am. Very.” She shot up, ignored the looks both worried and confused as to why she had just fallen over, and yelled: “Everyone stop! I can see the future and I have a plan.”
----------------------------------------
In spite of her earlier confidence, even threatening Partlight enough that he would resort to his broken magical sword was a struggle. It didn’t feel like it should have been, but the more Elia looked, the more she felt it, the magic hidden not just within his band of beads but in smaller trinkets spread all across his body.
One popped up to blocke a strike, another flashed to blind her as she tried to maneuver around him, and yet another simply punched her in the gut with a conjured fist. Twice.
Rhuna never went for half measures. Even her dregs had better kit than Elia.
She spat a tooth on the ground as he simply threw her back, then shot Karla with a spread shot of shrapnel. There was something to his gun club that was unlike a normal gun. She’d seen it shoot bags of tearing grapeshot, cannon balls the size of her fist, and continuous streams of sparks like a flamethrower. The powder never ran out, but was he conjuring the projectiles as well and if so, did he just not have a limit to his reservoir?
Damn cheating bastard. Definitely one of Rhuna’s. Victory would taste sweet and sweeter yet.
Either way, if she wasn’t far away enough, she had very little chance to dodge a scattershot fully. One blast took her off her feet, leaving her to watch the fight from the sidelines, bleeding out slowly.
“Thanks wolfbite ring,” she muttered before she passed out.
You have died
----------------------------------------
Eeek!
“You’re going to need to do more than just make cute sounds, Rye.”
Rye shot a barrage of snowballs, conjuring them at an industrial scale. They were coming off the shelves quick, cold, and sometimes kind of sloppy, but spell integrity mattered little at close range.
Y-you think I’m cute?
“Not the time Rye!” Elia hissed as a stream of sparking gunpower singed her ankles and she bounced away.
The ice was doing wonders in limiting his mobility. It was to Partlight what poison was to the Forlorn giant, a conspicuous weak point. It only reaffirmed to Elia that he didn’t fit in. After all, this was the place for conjurers to be at.
Honestly, the weakness was so obvious it almost came full circle and turned suspicious. Would Rhuna really overlook something as simple as conjuration resistance? Maybe she’d run out of items to slather onto her pet dreg. Maybe if Elia managed to defeat this man, she wouldn’t seem so untouchable anymore.
A sudden glow from his beads baked his immediate area in sweltering heat, like a full blast of sunlight on the beach.
‘Welp. There’s that mystery solved,’ Elia thought as the frost disappeared and he snapped her head in one swift motion.
You have died
----------------------------------------
Now? Rye asked.
“No. Not. Yet.” Elia dodged under another wide swing. It wasn’t the wide swing, not the one that she was waiting for. “Karla! Give him some sugar!”
“R-right!” Karla feigned lowering her guard.
Partlight went for it, backhanding her to unbalance her, then followed up with a quick twist of his body and a full-on hammer-blow.
“Now!”
Hailstone javelin–
The massive spear of ice and influences shattered under a quick moon-lit slash of his sword. Immediately, the world was drowned in white, in cold, in shards of ice and the pressure of a deep, deep ocean.
A rainbow formed, glittering around the snowstorm of a terrible miscast, but neither Elia nor Rye noticed much of it.
You have died
----------------------------------------
From the front!
“Nope.”
You have died
----------------------------------------
From the sides, all at once?!
“Nada.”
You have died
----------------------------------------
M-maybe we can try diplomacy?
“I’m sorry, but did I say stop casting?”
Well, no, but I – ACK!
You have died
----------------------------------------
They were sitting around a circle, her, Mouggen, and everyone else.
“What if we attacked this hypothetical threat like so?”
Mouggen shifted the pebbles that made up their makeshift model of the fight around a bit.
“Tried that. It works, but if we’re spread out, he’ll knock us back at some point. Being in melee is scary, but what’s really terrifying is his range. He’s got lethal attacks on every side, at every range besides very, very close.”
And besides her, nobody would be eager to get within hugging distance, nor were they as practiced fighting so close range. There would be nearly no time to react to attacks or get out of the way of him stepping on their toes. For Elia, no time was just barely enough.
“I could muffle only one of you,” Cesare said. “It would be easier than all at once. He won’t expect a sudden sneak attack, right?”
Elia nodded. “We still need to restrain him. That sword is annoyingly versatile. Getting in close is going to be dangerous.”
Karla raised a shaky hand. “I volunteer. As, um, tribute.”
Elia stared at her, long and hard. She was the best choice. But it was harder to admit that, though not as hard as admitting that Elia had grown attached to the tenacious little princess of blood and scary things. “I said it would be dangerous, not heroically-suicidal. We are going to have a talk about good role models later, Karla.”
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“But Mouggen is already getting the final blow,” Karla said, her voice turning quieter and quieter. “I want to do something hero-like too.”
“We’ll find you something,” Elia reassured her. “Hey look, if he does this, then twists like so, you can do your thing and give him the ol’ one-two Karla special. Don’t look at me like that, this is good. It’s a good plan. You’ll see.”
----------------------------------------
If anybody could read anything from the chaotic melee, it was that plans tended to evaporate on contact with the enemy. Partlight was only one man, but he outclassed everyone in nearly every category, besides maybe polite conversation. They were trying, by god they really were. But even with Karla’s chain restraining one arm and her entire strength used to pin down the other, it was not enough to fully immobilize him.
Elia got a good lick in though. He wouldn’t be putting much pressure on his left leg, especially not after a completely silent Mouggen’s followup.
“Bound in spirit. Free of mind. Cursed in Body and blind of Sense,” Partlight rumbled.
“Shut up!” Rye smacked him with a few ice balls, covering his mask in frost and hopefully blinding him.
He tried to summon his sword.
“Nuh!” Karla yelled, digging her sword into his arm and dragging it up in a jagged rent.
Partlight grunted, the first reaction wrung out of him after so many tries. Another hack cut deeply into his chest. He was approaching his limit.
It was almost exhilarating enough that Elia failed to notice Clive digging through the dragon corpse like some demented parasitic worm. The fucker was sturdy, she had to give him that.
“Clive! The fuck are you doing?” she yelled.
“I need to talk!” he said, “I need to see the dean. I have an appointment.”
And then he climbed down its gullet.
Umm.
“Yeah.”
That happened.
“Still think it was a bad call to knock him out?”
In hindsight, it was the moral choice, if only for his own safety.
“Yeah, also – woah!” She jumped over a wide blade of light. “Your aim’s getting sloppy, my dude. Slower as well. Where’d that ‘strongest mortal champion’ go, huh?”
Partlight didn’t answer. He was struggling enough, which didn’t keep Mouggen or Karla from laying into him. They were out to kill him thoroughly, as seemed only right for any undead who you could reasonably expect to revive in the middle of your victory dance.
Victory was coming though, inch by inch.
“This is almost easy,” Elia said and bit her tongue.
Don’t say that. Please. Whenever you say that it sounds like you’re eating a disappointment and hubris pie.
“Hah, man, I’d love some pie.”
Another languid slash cut through the air. Though she dodged it easily enough, her eyes widened for a brief moment before the boss tackled her, a last spurt of energy running through him. She’d seen enough wrestling matches to see where this was going, had read enough books to know that there were a dozen ways he could break her spine like this.
“No, fuck, we’re so close!” She stabbed his hips, his chest, tried to cut through his spine but didn’t cut deep enough. “Die already! You’re just a dreg, stop getting in my fucking way!”
Something snapped, likely her arm or her wrist. Either way, she dropped her spoon and, in that moment, still enveloped by that threatening pressure, there was nothing that could have been more terrifying than the creaks coming from inside her body.
“Darkness. Nothing left…” Partlight muttered, “nothing but the dream.”
And then he fell still, a pile of muscle and everything threatening to squish her by weight alone.
“This feels familiar,” she laughed, watching Mouggen and Karla approach. “Anybody need some free souls?”
Karla winced.
You could have said anything else.
Mouggen meanwhile cut through the sentimentalities, burying his sword in Partlight’s chest where the heart ought to be.
“May your soul rest within our sun.” he muttered.
I can’t help but notice that he isn’t dead yet.
Elia chuckled nervously. “Yeah. Hey Nali, this undead needs some last rites.”
Nali was just staring past her. Elia turned her head, just in time to watch the dragon rise. Its head was cut off at the neck, giving them a good look down its throat where thick globs of blood splashed out in buckets.
“Oh fudgesticks.”
It didn’t move like anything she’d ever seen. It twitched, its limbs scrambled and scratched across the floor without moving it. Something, some many things inside it poked against the leathery skin. Two long blue rods jutted out from its gullet. If she’d watched it move like this in a movie, she would have called the animators hacks.
The façade fell, sloughed off in heaps until the dragon was just a wiggling pile of skin and bone, a cocoon for the giant ethereal creature floating with all the languidness of a whale in water. Frilly fins fanned the air, and a long neck bent down in curiosity, the oddly humanoid face at its end inspecting the little creatures that had so foolishly entered its domain with no eyes.
You have challenged: Yolon of the void
When the announcement reached her haze, everybody was already running. They had been, for the better part of the last couple seconds, with Karla and Mouggen dragging a thoroughly battered Elia after. Nali was holding the doors open, their squealing so infinitely loud in the muffled air that now permeated the tower. Even the clock was silent, knowing that it better ought to be.
“My spoon!” Elia yelled, though half of it remained stuck in her throat as a single eye fell right on her face and–
The taste of fall hung heavy on the dry meadow. The wildfire hadn’t reached this far, but Da’ was still furious. They’d lost the apple-lemon orchard, and a good portion of the wheat. This would be a bad year for his ledger, and that was an understatement. As for Rye, she just wanted to finally have the soot out of her hair and put the entire year behind her. Winter was the season for little work and for cuddling, and she had a lot of catching up to do.
“I think we’ve done enough in this place,” Marcus groaned. “My back hurts, can’t we take a break if we’re going to look for embers into the night? Easier to find then, too.”
“Easier to stub your toe or fall in the canal. Fires have been getting worse every year too, with the longer days and whatnot.” Califer threw a look over his shoulder, making sure they hadn’t overlooked any. “Your call, Rye?”
The decisions always fell on her. When would it end? When would it finally be enough? Not today. And not tomorrow at the very least.
“We ought to keep looking, then–“
She spotted someone running towards them across the field. A servant. Sophia. The moment the sleepy-headed girl got close enough to make out her face, Rye knew something was seriously wrong.
“Mistress Rye!” The girl huffed and huffed as she stumbled over a ditch, catching herself just before tumbling in between her brothers.
“What is it, is it another fire? Is someone hurt?”
“No, it’s, it’s her, she’s… you have to come.”
Rye instantly knew who she was talking about.
Sam didn’t have many friends. Rye always thought that was because she scoffed at chances for gossip during the breaks she never took and didn’t have much in common with the other servants. She was always challenging herself, always working towards that one ephemeral goal she, a servant, had no hopes of reaching.
When Rye arrived at the estate, Sophia led her straight into the stables. There on a pile of hay lay Sam, hale and hearty, wrapped in a blanket that covered her from hair to toe. She flinched when she saw them enter.
“S-stop!” she cried. “It might be contagious.”
Rye knew that was a lie, but she sent everyone out anyway, everyone but her. She didn’t miss her brothers’ glances, turning from confused to terrified in a skip. There was dancing around a problem, and then there was staring into the face of the woman you love, telling her despite every evidence to the contrary that everything will be fine.
“Everything will be fine,” Rye said, resting a comforting hand on Sam.
Sam, unbeatable, invulnerable Sam, flinched some more, curling up more in the thin blanket that hid nothing.
“No, Rye, please. You don’t have to… It’s alright I’ll…”
Her legs were all wrong, bent like a goat’s. She had hooves too, the color of a bruised nail. When Rye snaked her hand under the covers, she found fistfuls of slick, black fur.
“Rye, please. Listen. You don’t have to be here, I can just…”
“Just what? Sneakily visit a physician, spend all your savings on a potion that won’t help you one bit?” Rye found her hand and squeezed it, looking her in the eyes. “You’re… alright. You aren’t sick. When did this happen?” she asked, because in lack of witches to curse her, the how was frighteningly obvious.
“Just an hour ago. I was cleaning the stalls, you know, prancing like I do, when…” She pulled the blanket up, invariably showing Rye everything. They both stared, in shock, in confusion, in lack of anything to say or do but squeeze hands more tightly. “Gods, it just goes on. Are all boons like this?”
“I hope not.” Rye cringed. “Sorry. I meant, likely not this…”
“It’s weird, I know. I’m a freak. You can say it. I’m not just from a strange land now, I’m a bonafide, gawk-at-me-on-the-streets freak.”
“No! Nonono, it’s…” exactly what Rye was thinking, but curse every thought she had, Sam needed a different kind of truth. “We’ll fix this.”
Sam laughed a dry, despondent laugh. “This was my twelfth. I don’t have any more soul shards. The mistress and mister, they’ll want me out. You know how they think about bekki.”
“You’re not bekki! You’re still you.” The transformation had stopped at the hips. Some treacherous part of her bemoaned that it had taken a good portion of her lover. Another part hated herself for thinking as much.
“I might as well be! All my savings, everything I’ve worked and slaved away for… it’s not enough Rye.” She looked so vulnerable then, like glass, and just as precious. “It’s not enough.”
They shared a moment of awkward silence.
“I can live like this,” Sam eventually said, as if pretending so would let her wrap this up more quickly. “The walking doesn’t even feel odd. I didn’t tell you how I vaulted the wall in a single leap, did I? And nobody will step on my toes ever again, considering I only have one… hoof. Oh, but I’m even taller now, so kissing might be a tad more difficult, and I’m fuzzier than a bumblebee now so I don’t know if you’d still want me–”
Rye inhaled deeply. “We’re going to the temple of Uovis in town, now. I’ll pay for the swap. I have money.” She closed her eyes, shivering as the next words left her mouth. “And if that’s not enough, I’ll lend you a shard..”
There was no world in which her parents wouldn’t notice, after the fact. They knew everyone important in Arvale, and the priest would have no reason to lie. But that was a sacrifice she was willing to make. They stared each other in the eyes, knowing that no matter what plans they had, their lives would take a drastic change of course today.
“Are we still friends?” Sam asked.
Rye choked down the lump in her throat. No turning back, no letting down, no breaking your word. “More than friends, love. Always.”
Always take responsibility.
As Sam wiped away tears, Rye had her train of thought interrupted by a little thing wiggling around in her hair.
“Wait, you’ve got a–“
The moment she thought about it, the thing turned black to better blend in with the strands. She could still see it, and as she plucked it from the strands she saw its face, a grub or a slug with a human face. A scream tore through the world and–
Rye woke up, to the sound of grinding and munching. It was a dream. Everything had been a dream. Karla was asleep, turning, twisting to her own nightmare. Nali was missing, but that was normal. Rye breathed out until she realized that they had been running, and for good reason.
A hand flopped down beside her. Mouggen’s. Her capacity for dealing with things went back to full. She closed her eyes, didn’t think about the horrors that were real, about the horrors that hopefully weren’t.
Existential dread was such a flexible term, and failed exactly to describe any of the things it was meant to.
The munching continued. How long until it was her turn? What would that mean? Why was she waiting around for it to happen?
‘Don’t be Rye. Be Elia. Channel the immovable, unbeatable, unwavering grump. Don’t think, act.’
Slowly, she raised an arm. The giant sea-slug glowed pale like the moon above her. In her hand a streak of ice materialized as silently as possible. She cast it just as quietly too. It sunk deep into the glossy skin of the creature, and detonated with a silent wumph. The shrapnel created an array of paths through its translucent body, like a shooting star stopped in motion.
Yolon looked down at her again, slightly annoyed. She conjured and the spell caught its eye.
An interesting spell. Ice, stretched thin beyond its limits. A lengthened cone, functional as a crown, but so, so slapdash. Two chambers, twinned sisters divided by indiscriminate walls. Then, force applied, pressure rising and eclipsing the mean, the balance, followed by rapid disassembly, a violent outburst of the shapes pushed into their artificial forms.
It smiled. A good attempt. But so much to improve.
A javelin just like hers formed above its hands with a snap. Rye watched in horrible silence as it went through a thousand, thousand shapes, glittering rainbows and swirling clouds, spears of light and rods of void. Terror gripped her at the confluence of conjured influence thickening the air. But in spite of the blatant lack of calm signs, no reaction appeared unwanted, no twirl of intruding influence went without bending in on itself and forming its own, unique spell.
And then it showed her what a real conjurer was like, and let her taste her own spell a thousand times over, all at once.
You have died
----------------------------------------
Rye woke up. It was not a good day to wake up. She had to swallow, once to make sure she really was here, then again because if she couldn’t swallow every thought she’d had over the past ten minutes, she feared she’d break like an overfilled pot.
Where was Elia? Her yelling should have been here, should have recentered her mind on the present.
No Elia. She looked around and found most everyone in their relevant positions. Clive, unconscious on the floor. Cesare, looking down at her, worried. Nali, looking at the dragon.
“Are you alright – oh shit!” Cesare jerked back and her heart skipped.
The sound of bone crunching reached her ears, of scales breaking, of skin stretching and tearing. Yolon was coming, his metamorphosis merely turned back to the start. He knew. He remembered between loops, because there was no other way Rye could explain how he was digging his divine sluggy self out of the corpse of a dragon without the meddling of that damned slave of Rhuna.
A dragon’s corpse. A mythical beast used as food for an overgrown slug. She should have laughed then, maybe she did. She wasn’t quite listening, wasn’t quite feeling up for anything much at all.
Cesare shook her. It was fine. They were going to die here, and she’d get to see Yolon of the void show her how insignificant anything she could ever do was. ‘Flex’ would be the word Elia would use, but screw it, she could use any word Elia could just as well.
If only she could fight with words and sounds instead of actions.
The void slug came, with him a thundering low choir of imposing bass. It rumbled towards them like a wave, rhythmic and foreboding, screaming ‘here, here comes your doom’. Yolon lowered his gaze and with a single flourish banished everyone into nightmare land again.
‘Not the same one,’ she thought as she was pulled under. ‘Please.’