Mujin flickered through the city and his spear flickered with him. Cloaked in the armor of Dragonplate. He hounded the pale blue haired vampiress like a trained beast but no matter how hard he tried, his blade found no purchase. It did not even draw close enough to change her ever present placid smile.
Three rapid thrusts were dodged effortlessly but a fourth appeared before her face in the blink of an eye. She shifted away more suddenly and purposefully than before, and Mujin thrust his palm, sending a blast of lightning. With neither the time nor mana to spare on an item with Channelling, its force paled in comparison to the mage in his party, he knew, but lightning immunity was rare among players, and with any luck, she would be paralyzed long enough for him to land a finishing blow.
The vampiress charged through the lightning unharmed before his eyes, and only through Sixth Sense and his reflexes did he barely have enough time to hold his spear before him. A metallic hand clawed through his plated scales, the staff of his spear managing to parry it away before it reached his face, and a kick from below followed.
Mujin felt that coming too but as he drew upon lightning mimicry a dullness shot through his body and the kick landed. His insides ruptured in an instant and pain wracked his body as blood vomited from his mouth. Mujin forced his body to dart back through the agony.
Breath evaded him as he did not have Body Supremacy like so many of the others and his healing slow with only an epic tier regeneration item to rely on, and yet the Seer did not act. Weakened and wounded, she’d only need to press on to claim victory and she remained at a distance, with lazy eyes and an unconcerned smile.
“You’d be better off running for help, no?” Blanche sweetly asked as she started to walk slowly towards him, her hair flowing muted pink again. Mujin didn’t respond, and wouldn’t even if he could, waiting with coiled tension for his body to heal well enough to fight again. “Ah, but that wouldn’t help much. Half of you should be dead by now.”
Mujin’s eyes sharpened at those words then banished them from his mind as the tauntings of an enemy. Something Blanche did not miss. “Why don’t you believe me? I am a seer after all. The Charlatan. The Pagan. The Strider. The Knight. The Amazon. They had me divine before you arrived and those are the bodies I saw. I may have neglected to mention that some of us will die too, but you’ll keep that a secret just between us, won’t you?”
Lightning sparked just briefly across Mujin’s arm as his frown deepened. He knew he shouldn’t listen to the words of an enemy. He knew that, but still worry and anger grew in the back of his mind and the chance her words were not just cheap lies. Blanche smiled, welcoming and unnerving.
“I could turn you. You’ll live that way, at least.” Blanche drew closer with every slow step. “I’ll save everyone left if you do.”
Mujin’s spear spun violently in his palm like a drill as he thrash it on the ground, sending a hail of dust and stone at the seer. Blanche flourished her hand, swatting away the rubble in a blur and Mujin flickered behind. With every ounce of his strength, he thrust his spear.
As she reached out a steeled palm to block, the frozen spear bent unnaturally, Willow curving it around her hand as the image of a dragon’s fang enveloped the spear. And the tip stopped just short of her unconcerned face. Mujin struggled against the invisible force locking him in place but not an inch of him would budge.
“So close.” Her voice deepened slightly as her body took the form of a man bearing the same expression of playful malice. “Just a little further.”
The steeled claws subsided, replaced with a ball of flames intensifying in the palm of her hand, outstretched right at Mujin’s face. And his eyes widened as a wave of flames surged forth.
---
Basem crouched behind a broken wall, the cloth and leather of his shoulder soaked red. The bleeding had finally stopped and stealth hide the scent of blood but his situation was the still same. The shadowhunter stalked him relentlessly. Every shot of hers threatened to claim his life should his caution and focus slow even a shade below his best and none of his own came close to finding their mark.
A truly hopeless situation, Basem cursed. It took every ounce of his resistance not to abandon the fight, abandon the others, but with each passing moment he felt more drawn to the thought. The barest hint of danger let him blink away just before a shadowy arrow destroy his meager cover, and sent him back on the move.
“Well done.”
The smile he hated most mocked him in his mind as he darted from cover to cover.
“Good thing we have you.”
Disingenuous praise of armed adults taunted him as he evaded another arrow.
“A sharpshooter such as yourself will fit right in with our band.”
The words of a being he didn’t understand no different than any other.
“You’re the best card in my hand.”
“I am no tool!” Rage that had been boiling within finally exploded as he fired his bow half blind out from his cover.
An arrow grazed deep into his cheek as the bursting shrapnel of his own low across the ground missed entirely, but they did their job. He locked another Hunter’s Mark on the traces of the shadowhunter and fired arrow after arrow on the run. His speed was less than his vampirized foe, only skill and intuition allowing him to survive the exchanges with shallow wounds.
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But he drew no closer to victory.
“Die!”
Every passing moment brought him closer to death.
“Die!”
His instincts and sense urging him to flee.
“Die!”
The huntress too quick, reacting too well. The Sixth Sense trait Basem believed, just like what the stupid spear warrior and the doll user had. Another arrow slicing deep past his side but Basem ignored the pain as he took aim. Eyes of the most intense ire and desire to kill swelling past the breaking point.
“Die!” Light shattered off him as his arrow soared.
The shadowhunter dodged but the arrow curved back in an instant, pursuing her once more. She dodged it again and darted into the shadows as a second pierced through the stone ground. She rose from another shadow in the distance and jolted her head back as a snipe bored a hole in the wall behind.
Bernadette retreated back into the shadows and lingered. A consideration to leave the fight emerged in her mind but she dismissed it. She was told to kill the one brought to her. An urge to advance her rank bloomed after but she suppressed it. She was told to wait until she had reached the height of these classes. Bernadette wished for more time to think, more time to hunt carefully and cautiously, but she couldn’t linger any longer.
She sprung from the shadows, dodging the arrow she knew would come and aimed her own in turn. But the strider’s arrow burst in a consuming flash of light, burning away the shadows around and robbing her of her sight. In the hazy sense of danger she blitzed around, dodging the three chasing clusters of harm, and Sixth Sense flared at the strider blinking behind her.
She turned and fired at the same time he did, but as Basem’s fingers left the string, the recoil knocked him back at an awkward angle, escaping certain death at the cost of half his neck. A second arrow was nocked in an instant and as the shadowhunter turned her focus to him, the first arrow coated in alchemical silver pierced a hole through her back. The wretch metal stunned her body and mana for an instant but that was far too much time. Basem loosed his arrow and silver shrapnel shredded her apart.
Chunks of flesh squirmed and regenerated in an instant, but the shadowhunter’s vampire form ran out. The sliver of a moment’s thought felt like an eternity but she raised her bow in the end, just as she was, and Basem’s arrow blew off her head. Her body swayed then crumbled back and laid still on the ground, her Greater Lord status available to the hunter.
Basem stared at the body for only a moment before the pain of his neck snapped him back to his situation. He pulled an item from his bag that slowly regenerated his flesh but failed to finish the job completely as his mana ran dry. He clicked his teeth. Without the boost of Haste, he was as good as dead against these monsters. He spared the city a single glance in thought of the others and fled, thinking nothing more than his own survival.
---
Mujin flickered through the sky, coated in the bloodied armor of Dragonplate as spells of all the elements soared past. Sixth Sense and Lightning Reflexes allowed him to avoid a lethal blow but only just barely under the endless onslaught of magic.
A slower stream of fire gave him the opening to burst back towards the ground, and Blanche appeared in his sights in the form of a woman. He parried away her clawed hand and a blast of mana from a male male hand sent him crashing through a building. Mujin jolted away to his feet as a pool of acid melting through stone, and the vampiress blinked behind him, turning female once more with coiled blows.
He parried the first but the second slashed through his armor once again and stunted his use of mana. The male form raised a hand but no spells came as Mujin leapt back. The seer held still for a moment with a careless smile before resuming her calculated and flawed attack.
She was toying with him, Mujin knew, and he had no answer for it. He had avoided death within the hold by his lightning mimicry form, but her claws could rob him of that and he would have no way to escape her Hold. She could have ended things there, as she could have several times before, and it was not for lack of ability that she did not do so.
Mujin would not claim to be an expert, but he suspected she had limitless mana. With no need for concern of magic, she was free to torment him, like cat before a cornered mouse. Mujin clenched his teeth as he soldiered on through the danger. He had acquired power beyond his imagination and yet still he fell short of the gifted. But he soldiered on, not the slightest hint of consideration for retreat in his mind.
“Would you like to know how this ends?” Blanche asked as she slipped around his spear, returning grazing claws. “I did see each fight, this one as well. It’s going exactly the same.”
“Silence!” She darted away from lunging flicker of his furious spear.
“So angry.” She taunted back. “Ah, but there are some I can’t see. Virgil’s is closed to me. I asked him why and he wouldn’t say. Isn’t that inconsiderate?”
Mujin thrust and flourished his spear as she spoke, without result. “You’re friend facing him is also strange. Always changing. Have you asked him why? Yours is quite normal, by the way.”
Mujin blocked a kick from her, sending him sliding back on his feet and he dug in, honing his stance further. “Every man’s fate is his own!”
Blanche paused across from him, her posture full of openings. “Ah, did I touch a nerve? But you are right. Nothing’s set in stone. For instance…” She blurred, far faster than she had before, and blood poured from where Mujin’s left arm used to be, the same dragon scaled arm in Blanche’s hands.
“In my vision, I took the right.”
Mujin resisted every urge to pay mind to the agony of his wound as he turned to face her, spear held firm in his lone arm as he strained his senses and focus as far as they would go.
“So stubborn.” Blanche tossed his arm to the side. “But that is why I asked for you. The moment when the hardened warrior breaks, and loses all his unwavering resolve is truly the greatest bliss.”
Mujin burst towards her with everything he had, dragon fang forming around his spear, and froze in place. Without pause, his form turned to lightning and he ripped through, bearing his spear down on the seer, and she simply blinked away. A volley of fiery bolt bloomed in the air around her, and with a thought hailed down at Mujin.
In the face of death, Mujin gripped his spear still and with all his strength, threw the spear to impale the shocked vampire as the firebolts bombarded him. Blanche recoiled with pained movements, a pain in her soul she thought she had long forgotten changed her expression from shock to rage.
Her form switched erratically and incompletely between her two as his mana refused to obey fully, and in the corner of her eye she catch notice of a figure. The dragoon, bloodied and broken, took hold of his spear and wrenched it from her along with her wretched shriek, and took a honed stance.
Whole minded with unbroken resolve, Mujin ignored everything around him as he focused on nothing but his form. The ruthless fang of a dragon enveloped his spear once more, and he flurried it faster than Blanche could flee. In the blink of an eye half a dozen blows bored her body apart, and she had only long enough for her anger and shock and confidence to fall to the glimmers of fear as her soul followed.
Mujin dropped to his knees before the remains of his defeated opponent, coarse agony escaping his throat as the backlash of Dragonfang raged through his soul. He tried to rise to his feet and fell further down. On the cold stone ground, Mujin writhed, pain nearly stealing all his thoughts, as he weathered it with all his might, willing his soul to hold together, lest it too fall apart.