When the hall had crashed into the ground, one chunk of roof had been pushed almost straight up and was supported by surrounding rubble, forming a sundial-like monument near the edge of the ruins. Ligivul perched on top of this formation like a gargoyle, scanning what little of the ruins she could see for movement.
This really wasn’t the best way to search for survivors. She could barely see anything from her vantage point, and anyone concerned about being seen from above could just hide under the wreckage. But that was sort of the point. Ligivul was mostly just trying to stall for time, while still making a plausible effort to do her duty. She needed time and space to think.
There had to be some other way. Even if she managed to avoid killing anyone she didn’t have to, there would still be the blood of mostly innocent family members on her hands. And she still didn’t want the world to end, that would kill both her and the Primoi she didn’t want to take out herself. But if she gave up or refused, there were a million ways it could still go wrong. The monsters surrounding the ruins could take matters into their own hands, or any survivors could try and escape their encirclement, or… Worse. Ligivul decided to end that thought there.
No matter how she approached the question, she couldn’t find a way to get them out of there. What a surprise, the hundreds of thousands of monsters who were banking their futures on this event weren’t leaving her a convenient back door.
From where she was sitting, she had three options. One: Go through with it, allowing millions of humans to die, thus resulting in her slowly dying of natural causes. Two: Intentionally fail and let the army finish the job. Same results as option one, but more immediate death, albeit not on her hands. Finally, three: Give up and let whoever had contacted her… NO. At least if she picked one of the other options, the monsters living in the down below would still be alive.
She was on a timer here. If she kept dithering, the monsters would grow restless, and even a prophetically-ordained chosen one could only be so convincing. Semi-fortunately, her mysterious patron had left her a few tools of their own to help her out.
She pulled a small pouch from her belt and began rifling through it. If she’d made the glyphs inside herself, it would probably be far easier to find what she was looking for. But she knew next to nothing about enchanting, and had had to resort to putting labeled stickers on the tiny stones to figure out what each of them did.
She pulled out a stone labeled “BETTER VISION”. A pattern of sigils covered the surface of the almost spherical pebble, a patchwork of jagged lines, spirals and seemingly random dots. Ligivul thought they looked like nonsensical scribbles, but the glyph worked, so there had to be some method to the madness.
Ligivul placed the glyph in the palm of her hand, formed a fist around it and squeezed. A pale blue glow shone through the cracks between her fingers as the spell kicked in. A large band of blue dots appeared through the mist, surrounding the ruins. That would be the army, then.
She looked down. There, almost directly below her, maybe a dozen dots slowly drifted along the faint patch of ground she could actually see.
She felt her hand begin to heat up and examined it. The light coming from inside was beginning to intensify. She quickly opened her fist and the glyph inside dimmed and returned to inertness almost immediately. Whoever made these things clearly didn’t put much effort into making them last.
Ligivul stashed the glyph back in her pouch, stood up and drew her two gold-flecked daggers. She hadn’t seen any other signs of life in the ruins while the glyph was active. If she was lucky, whoever were below her were just a few wild monsters who had wandered into the ruins.
-
“Even if I could do it on purpose, I can’t see when you’re gonna die! Norse souls are interconnected, my powers mostly just work on other people in my Domain. You clearly haven’t done enough research to form an opinion of your own, so I’m not going to take your request seriously.”
Hurat kept close to Sardok as he attempted to walk away from the Aztec. “Or maybe, you just want to hide the fact that you’re gonna do it! That’s right, buddy. I’ve figured out your little scheme.”
“You’re insane.”
Hurat leaned in for a noogie. “C’mon, lighten up a little!”
Sardok pushed him away. “Don’t touch me, cretin.”
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“Okay then…” Tough crowd.
Gilnevn walked over and looked at Hurat. “Hey, what’s your problem, exactly? Do you even realize that we’re all in danger right now?”
Hurat spread his hands out in front of him, a meaningless gesture of nervous confusion. “I’m just trying to keep morale up around here, there’s no need to feel hopeless about all this. It works for my family.”
“Well, we’re not your Domain, are we?” Gilnevn somehow managed to make the emphasis on each word have its own meaning.
“Evidently not…” Hurat decided to keep his hands to himself. “...So, are you folks always this prickly, or is it a stress thing?”
Sardok folded his arms. “Maybe you just aren’t capable of understanding what it means to be serious. Ever consider that?”
Gilnevn sighed. “Sardok, don’t make us look bad. Yeah, we’re basically always like this. Or at least most of the time, we hide this kind of thing when we have guests over. We know it’s ugly.”
“Good to know.” Hurat decided to keep his mouth shut.
After another minute of silently traipsing through the ruins, Sardok stopped, eyes wide. He began frantically looking around, as if searching for something. Hurat was initially confused by the display, but the Norse immediately hunkered down, as if waiting for something. Gilnevn turned to look at him. “What? What’re you getting?”
Sardok looked up and froze. “...That.”
Everyone turned to see what he was looking at. High above their heads, a vague shape was descending through the fog, slowly growing as it approached. A second after everyone saw it, an identical shape split off from it and hovered next to it. Then a third, and a fourth, a fifth, a sixth. The sky was filling with these shapes, and whatever they were, they were quickly approaching.
Gilnevn processed the situation first. “She’s duplicating! Keep your eyes on the original!”
The first of the figures landed. Ligivul, or at least an illusory copy of her, rolled as she hit the ground and came up with her knives out. She immediately leapt towards a nearby Norse, only to dissolve in a flash of green light the instant before she touched them.
More copies of Ligivul began landing in droves among the Primoi on the ground, pretending to attack before vanishing. And they kept coming, appearing from the mist above with no end in sight. And any of them could be real.
Hurat’s hands ignited with orange light when the first few copies began to land. He raised his arms skyward and two pillars of flame jetted upwards. He waved his arms around, making the fire follow his movements, but he could barely do anything. The copies just passed through the fire harmlessly and continued as if nothing happened.
Gilnevn’s eyes darted from copy to copy, keeping on the lookout for any that looked more physically tangible than the others. “Sardok, are you getting anything?”
Sardok screwed his eyes shut, trying to sift through all the tiny premonitions he was receiving for anything useful.
Gilnevn swung at a nearby copy, which harmlessly passed through the punch and vanished. “Any time now, kid!”
“Stop calling me…” Sardok’s eyes shot open, a look of abject terror covering his visage. He whipped around to look at a piece of lumber sticking out of the ground, forming a small vantage point. It was on this shard of wreckage that Ligivul finally appeared.
The aerial attack had been a diversion. Ligivul winked into existence on top of the wood, dispelling the invisibility she had shrouded herself with. She leapt from her vantage point, one dagger drawn back like a scorpion’s tail.
Before Sardok could call for help or get out of the way, Ligivul landed on top of him. He fell to the ground with enough force to knock the wind from his lungs. He wouldn’t get the chance to take another breath.
Gilnevn turned just in time to see her sister slide her dagger across Sardok’s throat. Ligivul looked up as she made the motion, and for a brief moment, she locked eyes with Gilnevn. Covered by her veil, Ligivul’s face couldn’t be seen, just the green glow of her eyes. But Gilnevn’s expression was all too clear.
Ligivul saw the shock on her sister’s face twist into rage. She saw Gilnevn’s hands ball into fists as she pulled her knife away from Sardok’s neck. When Gilnevn started to run at her, Ligivul made her choice. She slipped back into invisibility and darted from Sardok, running away from the crowd and dispelling her still-falling illusory copies.
Gilnevn put her fist down when she saw Ligivul vanish, but she didn’t stop running. She bent down to look at Sardok, only to see that the light in his eyes had already dimmed.
Hurat noticed that the copies had stopped falling and turned off the fire spraying from his hands. He looked down to see Gilnevn kneeling by Sardok’s bleeding corpse. He walked over and peered over her to see that she wasn’t cradling Sardok, or trying to stop the blood flow, or anything. She was just sitting there, the eyes of every Primus in the group on her. After a moment, Hurat found the right words. “...Guess she picked a target, then.”
Gilnevn slowly nodded, her face grave. “...She’s really doing it. I wasn’t sure if she even had it in her, but… She wants us, humanity, herself gone. She’s fulfilling the prophecy.”
Hurat saw the Norse among them exchange worried looks, letting the true gravity of the situation begin to dawn on him. He turned back to Gilnevn, who stood up while he spoke. “So what do we do?”
“...Dunno. Not much we can really do. If we’re lucky, we live.”