Jie leaped to her feet and was struck again by two more shadow arcs that sent her tumbling through the air, trailing shadow in her wake. Again, a purple and black runic sphere bore down on her, about to collide with her, but this time Jie formed a lightning step platform and boosted off it just in time. The rune missed and exploded against the floor as Jie zipped across the battlefield and sent out two finger of light attacks at the assassin to keep him at bay.
The assassin was smaller than the other three, but not by much. Like the others, green fire burned where his eyes should be. He carried twin khopeshes that gleamed with a golden color like bronze polished to perfection even as green qi oozed like pus along the blades.
Each finger of light found its target. One hit the mummy's stomach, and the other struck his shoulder, sending him spiraling through the air away from Jie and blasting chunks of the green fiery barrier into a spray of embers.
But the assassin still managed to land on his feet, his claws scraping along the floor yet failing to scratch it. He hissed at Jie, green fire burning in his throat, as he raised his blades. His aura flared and green, translucent blades burst to life in a circle around him, spinning around him in a whirling vortex of death.
"It has been an age since I've dueled one who walks the path of dragons! Your death shall be a glorious prize!" the assassin yelled. His voice was dry, rasping, and hollow.
Green fire swallowed him, and he vanished.
Jie's instincts screamed danger and she spun around just as he reappeared behind her in a flash of green flames. His twin sickle swords sliced toward her and she grabbed the mummy's wrists, stopping the blades just before they touched her neck. But the swirling blades of green qi around him slammed into Jie's sides, slicing against her qi armor with a rattling, howling clatter. Each hit further drained her already rapidly depleting qi reserves and wore her armor down.
I have to end this quickly, or I'm dead... Jie thought.
Jie reinforced her qi armor as best she could, straining her meridians as she funneled energy into it. She pulled the assassin closer to her, ignoring the stench of embalming chemicals and foul fire that clung to him as she headbutted him on what was left of his nose and told her qi armor to react to it.
The mummy's head snapped back as cracks formed in the burning qi armor covering him. The barrier mummy raised one hand from up on her pipe and her orb of green fire swelled. Tendrils of green fiery qi burst forth from the orb and connected to the assassin, pumping energy into the fiery armor.
Jie snarled and pulled the assassin down as she formed a dragonfist over her knee and drove it hard into the monster's ribs. The explosion sent him tumbling backward and Jie used that moment to send out two finger of light attacks at the barrier mummy. The barrier mummy dodged the first finger of light attack, causing the stream of dragon lightning qi to impact the wall of exposed gears and machinery and arc over it. The gears sped up in response as the purple glow in the transparent floor intensified.
The second finger of light attack struck the barrier mummy in the chest and blasted it off the pipe she clung to. Jie ran toward the falling mummy, sidestepping runic spheres, skeletal snake bites, and shadow arcs as she raced toward the barrier mummy.
The barrier mummy was the linchpin. As long as the mummies had those barriers and kept her distracted and unable to focus down a single target, she would remain on the back foot until she lost. Of that Jie was certain.
Though the mummies outnumbered Jie, she was still faster, and she reached the barrier mummy before the mummy even hit the ground. Jie leaped at her, forming a dragonfist as she did so. The barrier mummy's aura flared and she turned to sand again, streaming away from Jie.
But, Jie had expected as much and unleashed a finger of light attack at the cloud of swirling sand. The crackling bolt of blue lightning grazed the cloud of sand, heating part of it into glowing red glass in an instant.
The barrier mummy reformed away from Jie with an inhuman shriek of agony. The mummy's burning eyes were utterly fixated on one of its hands which remained as glowing hot glass and she gripped her wrist as though afraid to even touch her glass hand lest it shatter.
Jie took advantage of the mummy's distraction to allow her dragonfist to fade and cycled two finger of light attacks at the same time. The mummy, too overwhelmed by pain and shock, failed to react in time as Jie unleashed her twin finger of light attacks.
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Two bolts of snarling dragon lightning qi arced across the space between Jie and the mummy. The barrier mummy looked up, her burning green eyes flaring wide as the bolts slammed into her stomach and chest with such force that they lifted her off her feet. Dragon lightning qi crackled, writhed, and roared against the mummy's barrier, creating a trail of green embers and blue sparks as the mummy hurtled through the air.
The barrier mummy flew into the wall of exposed machinery and caught herself on the rotating gears around her. She roared her defiance at Jie as her damaged barrier began to regenerate...
The gears around the mummy continued to rotate and crunched around the mummy's foot. The mummy's roar turned to a howl of terrified agony, and she tried to wrench herself free, her bony fingers scrabbling and clawing over the metal around her as she struggled and twisted her body.
The barrier mummy activated her movement skill again as the gears pulled her deeper. But she failed to cycle it properly, turning only half to sand as the gears drew her in...
Her chest crunched with a flash of green flame, followed moments later by her skull, and finally the tinkling pop of her glass hand shattering.
Green fire washed over the metal gears as sand, bandages, and dried-out, desiccated flesh clung to the clanking gears. Her screams echoed through the chamber for a moment before following her into death.
Jie shuddered, feeling sick at the sight. But she reminded herself that the mummy had died long ago. This was no different than the other undead she'd slain before now. That thought helped.
Jie turned to face the other mummies. Her electric blue eyes were hard and ready to end the rest of the undead. The barriers of green fire surrounding them broke apart into green embers that drifted in the stagnant air. The mummies faltered for a moment but quickly regained their composure.
The shadow mummy hurled another series of shadow arcs at Jie and she leaped out of their path as the entire room shuddered violently. The rune caster mummy threw two more runic spheres her way and Jie boosted off a lightning step platform, pushing herself well out of their trajectory.
Then, just before Jie landed on the floor, the entire building righted itself causing her to misjudge her landing and hit the ground with a hard, awkward thud. She turned the motion into a roll to recover as best she could, however, and thankfully the shifting building disoriented her enemies just as badly.
The twenty-five degree tilt that the pyramid had been at leveled out as the entire room, or perhaps the entire pyramid, lifted upward, shuddered to a stop, then resumed lifting upward again in quick succession. The strange jolting motion lifted them all into the air and then drove up into them, causing them all to stagger.
After a moment, the jolting motion smoothed out into a steady climb.
The assassin mummy chose that instant to appear in the air behind Jie in a flash of green fire, his blades angled down at her neck.
Jie strained her lightning step to the limit as she dashed out of the path of his attack, using the insight she'd gained while fleeing from the lake monster to create a lightning afterimage that remained where she'd been, crackling with dragon lightning.
The assassin's blades sliced through Jie's afterimage as it unleashed a burst of bright blue dragon lightning qi that arced over her would-be killer.
"Argh!" the assassin roared as his bandages smoked and his entire body spasmed from the lightning.
To his credit, despite the lightning, he managed to land on his feet, staggering as he did so. Jie slipped a kick at his knee under the whirling blades that surrounded him and felt dry bone snap beneath her foot. The mummy collapsed onto that knee and swept a khopesh at Jie. But he was too slow, and Jie spun away from the strike and back around behind the assassin. Green whirling blades sliced against Jie's qi armor, each hit draining her qi, as she reinforced her muscles with qi and gripped the mummy's head.
Jie wrenched the assassin mummy's head, snapping his neck and ripping his head clean off his shoulders as a font of green flame boiled up through the stump of his neck like lifeblood. He collapsed, his whirling blades clattering against the transparent floor and failing to damage it as they sputtered out.
His aura wavered then died as the green fire fueling him flickered and went out. The shadow mummy threw more arcs at Jie and she tossed the assassin mummy's head toward them as she dived to the side. The arcs of shadow sliced apart the assassin mummy's head and continued through it, shredding his body as Jie rolled across the floor and sprang to her feet just in time to evade a strike from one of the skeletal snakes.
Jie panted heavily as rivulets of sweat ran down her skin. Though she'd taken out a good number of her attackers, she'd burnt through an incredible amount of qi to do it and was now down to perhaps a tenth of her maximum. Her meridians throbbed from the abuse of channeling so much power without even a hint of her usual restraint and her lungs ached for every breath as she pushed herself to her absolute limits.
The other snake struck out at Jie. She dropped to the ground and slid across the floor as its jaws snapped shut on where her chest would've been. She then sprang back to her feet as the rune caster mummy threw three runic spheres at her simultaneously that homed in on her. Jie waited until the last possible instant and boosted off a lightning step, slipping between the runic spheres. They collided with one another behind her and exploded in a swirling mass of darkness and purple energy. The blast sent her tumbling forward and she rolled across the floor before regaining her feet once more.
Her movements brought her toward the shadow blade mummy, her next target. Evading his arcs of shadow qi combined with the runic spheres from the caster mummy was causing her to burn through an incredible amount of qi. Qi she could no longer afford to use.
As she approached him, the shadow blade mummy cycled a new martial skill. Thick, oily darkness bubbled up out of his blades and crawled up his arms, spreading over his body like tar until it covered him from head to toe. His blades lengthened and oozed tar-like shadow.