---Jess---
It took two entire days for the first probing attack to come for them.
Two haggard looking men with mirrored equipment. One had a mechanical left arm and leg, the other a mechanical right arm and leg.
Both had identical equipment. Both had identical annoying equipment.
To start there was their annoying outfits. Lines of metal and tubes wrapped both under and over their clothing and physically entered their fully mechanical limbs. These frames seemed to boost their movement – every time they jumped, they jumped a dozen feet in the air or to the side and the frame around their legs glowed bright yellow. Every time they swung their arms, their arm frame would glow dark yellow.
Their clothing was an equivalent to super Kevlar or something – it weakened minor physical attacks to nothing – and when combined with their weapons they became…annoying. That’s the overwhelming reaction Jess had to this duo.
Both had a pair of glowing staffs for closed ranged attacks – something like a two handed white lightsaber – along with an ability to sort of shove anything they pushed with their mechanical arm really hard. For ranged attacks they each had a handgun that shot little glowing pellets really fast and a large gun that shot massive blobs of sticky burning nonsense.
They were so identical Jess was starting to think they might be the same person. Just a clone or some nonsense.
Well they were annoying. James was gone hunting when they showed up and Maddy was deep in a cute little wizard fugue when they arrived. The first encounter lasted all of thirty seconds with the annoying pair bounding in – jumping over the pit a few times and then dashing away.
They had returned less than five minutes later and started shooting silently.
That’s the moment they shifted from humans to annoying assholes in Jess's head.
Troy had shot an incredibly fast arrow that had simply bounced off one of them. Jess had seen that same arrow shoot straight through a beetle monster before, so their armour was actually noteworthy.
Three seconds later he’d shot one of his “Smite arrows” as she called his glowing light expected shots and that one had drilled down into Left’s shoulder.
How that bitch had dodged enough for the shot to miss something vital Jess wasn’t sure.
Maddy had looked up and spoken – used her easy “Die by the power of my voice” attack but other than a portion of the pair’s head glowing it hadn’t seemed to effect them.
They had then shot at Maddy.
They shot at Maddy!
Jess moved before she realized what was happening, her body destroying the distance between her and her best friend in a flicker of void.
The shots bounced harmlessly off Jesses helm as soon as she arrived and the two shifted from annoying assholes to opponents that needed to die.
Jess grabbed Maddy’s body – her friend yelped as she pulled her in close then destroyed the distance back to Troy just in time to defend against another burning shot.
Jess raised her bracer and felt the flaming gunk stick to her forearm. Again! Bastard!
It was like napalm or something – it took so much mana to defend against and was so hard to scrape off.
Flicking her arm to the side Jess tossed her bracer and created a new one. It said a lot when the mana cost of creating a new chunk of armor was less than keeping that one burning or trying to scrape it off.
Troy was still rapid firing shots when Jess began expanding her protective dome – her arms swirling about them as she extruded walls and pushed them further and further away.
All within this dome is my domain. All within this dome is under my protection.
Jess would never say the chant out loud – it was embarrassing. Still it helped to think it. Some way of declaring what she was doing deep in her magic.
Her domain expanded. Instead of wrapping tightly around her body contained in meresly armour, Jess’s protection extended out wrapping around the entire pit and both her friends. She felt herself almost stretched as she claimed the space marking her territory or whatever.
Troy continued to shoot through the barrier, Jess mentally marking his mana signature and the feeling of his arrows leaving them as protections that protected better being outside of the barrier.
She was getting better at letting her friends shoot through the inside of the dome – leaving a direction open was incredibly easy to do but leaving a direction open and strong? Having a one way barrier that wasn’t weak? That took more effort than anyone seemed to understand.
Bastards!!!
The annoying pair napalmed the whole side of Jess’s dome. She could feel the way the heat and corrosive damage seemed to eat directly at Jesses mana stores. It wasn’t even trying to attack her or those she protected…just her reserves. Just her ability to protect.
They shot napalm at Maddy’s equipment as well setting fire to the area unprotected by her dome.
It’s attacking my reserves. I need to protect my reserves. Protect my barrier! Protect my barrier!
Jess reached out and grasped the solidified mana in her dome. It was hers. It was part of her, part of her body, part of her domain. She would protect it so it could continue protecting them.
With a lurch the golden creation mana tilted to destruction – flicking pure purple-black with Jesse’s intent. The fire fell through it even as it was destroyed.
Jess’s golden armor tinted purple in that moment, her body cloaked in destruction barely pushed into the shape of armor.
A few shots from the pair attempted to shoot through the void barrier but they were destroyed as they passed through.
A large cannon shot flew through partly melted but still a threat and Jess blurred her black glove snuffing it out as it got close.
That was the fastest space eating lurch she'd done before. Something to keep in mind.
Jess flicked the barrier back. The barrier was golden once again and stable. The napalm gone.
Her reserves were lower – that had been much more costly than normal…but they were protected.
She hadn’t done that before. The destruction of the flip side of her mana rarely resonated with her concept and domain of protection no matter how much she imagined offense being the best defense.
Suddenly James returned.
He bounded in, carrying a massive monster sea monster that looked something like a dinosaur covered in kelp and seaweed.
Immediately tossing it to the side James flew across the space to punch one of the annoyances.
Bullets seemed to bounce off him as he moved and Jess half expected the annoyance to paste with James’s strike.
Annoyance one was pushed back but stayed in an annoying piece.
Once again, Jess had seen James’s punch smash straight through armour.
Stupid Kinetic absorbing nonsense.
And in this moment – mid dealing with the first pair – a new annoyance appeared.
High above, a figure clad in glowing golden armor stood staring down at the group.
Her armor was insultingly similar to Jesse's own.
Like she had spotted Jesse's classy golden armor and decided to copy her – but instead of just stealing Jesse's domain manifestation, this bitch tried to one up her. While Jesse's armor has subtle swirls and patterns, the figure above had garish decorations. Where Jesse's armor was practically shaped, the figure has small wings and loops and gems and stupid little tassels
The woman's voice rang out filling the space and dripping with arrogant bitchy energy.
Jess disliked her from first glance. She hated her from the first word.
It wasn’t even the words the woman spoke although those also sucked. Just her tone and mocking laugh. The way Jess was singled out – she could hear the way the woman spoke directly to her.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Mortals dress themselves in divine image but find their crude imitations lacking. Their dress is little more than paper before true power,” the figure mocked.
Bitch you copied me!
Jess felt prickles as points attempted to stab through chinks in her armor. She felt foreign power attempt to dissolve and piece and weaken her domain but they were about as effective as needles thrown against a brick wall.
There's no way her protection would fail against such a round about attack. How could she protect others if she couldn't even protect herself? How would her protection fail when the woman wasn’t even hitting her dead on?
James had started to fly after the first annoying pair and the woman's focus seemed to flick to him as he passed.
“Mortals delude themselves into believing they can fly up to heaven. Their blasphemy is harmless and overlooked but fails in divine presence,” the woman declared once again.
James fell.
James who seemed invincible suddenly found gravity worked for him again.
James landed gracefully and seemed to pause – an annoyed look on his face.
He jumped a good 10m into the air – Jess had seen him jump into the sky before – and growled.
She could see the way he visibly considered letting the pair go to attack this witch, but after a glance around decided to pursue his first group.
Whether he had decided they were more of a threat or decided he wouldn’t let the floating copy dictate his actions wasn’t clear but he shot after the pair running along the ground faster than Jess had ever seen him run before.
“Heaven Fall” the sky bitch spoke and soon spear after golden spear began to rain down on Jess's domain.
Her barrier blocked the barrage easily enough of course but the strikes were constant.
Continuous.
And Jess’s reserves were already tanked from before. She could feel the attacks whittling away at her – feel the way her mana dipped drop by drop. The attacks were landing against her domain and it was her willpower under attack just as much as it was her mana. Her willpower that had taken a massive hit because of the napalm and whatever new aspect of her armor she'd unlocked.
How long could she last? If she were fresh probably a whole day or two but right now? It felt like she had less than an hour before her strength failed and she had to drop back to a limited range of motion.
They couldn’t sit here forever.
“Blocking sound” Maddy spoke from beside them and suddenly the pitter of attacks faded into almost suffocating silence.
Smart. Smart. If the sky bitch was speaking out strange commands and those were affecting them it was good to remove her voice. See how you like that! Jess silently laughed staring up at the annoyance. Her friends wouldn’t need a whole hour to finish this imposter. She could protect them against anything.
Maddy was sending out several probing attacks each small things designed to test the woman’s defenses.
Jess relaxed slightly. If anything, this barrage was much less damaging than the napalm despite looking more impressive.
A smite arrow shot up from Troy and blasted through the figures head. Jess almost cheered but suddenly the figure healed the damage.
Glowing golden words rested in the air directly above her barrier. “Heaven’s apostles are protected from the crude weapons of mortals.”
A second smite arrow flew up and bounced off the sky bitches head. This was cheating!
“Those of heaven cannot be damaged for they are a world apart from mortals!” the glowing words shifted and continued to display her arrogant commandments.
Beside her Troy suddenly jerked and whispered “Maybe?” Jess turned to look at him just in time to watch him melt into her shadow and disappear.
----------------------------------------
---Troy---
Troy was starting to feel useless. It was a common feeling – one that had faded a bit as he specialized more but was flaring up after all his attacks were ignored.
One kill. Give me one kill.
That was his mantra. His hope packed into that modified Piercing Powershot and its follow up charge.
Something wasn’t right.
The woman in armour seemed to be doing too much. Clue one. She was covered in armour that seemed derived from creation mana. Simple enough. Clue two. As soon as she arrived, she seemed to be covering the area in light. Otherwordly light that grew stronger as soon as she mentioned “heaven” and seemed to be carying at least some of her attacks. If that hadn’t been a hint, those glowing spears she shot looked incredibly familiar. Definitely a Light/Creation focused opponent and Troy was leaning towards mage despite the armour.
But…the woman was also standing in the air. She might be able to do that with a bunch of weird specialized concepts but it felt like a kinetic power. So she also had a speed/slow affinity like James.
And then she healed from a powershot so she also had a life affinity?
No something wasn’t adding up. Troy’s eyes glowed with light mana as he scanned the surroundings. It made more sense for the figure to only have light and creation like him – it made more sense for the figure high above them to be a solid illusion with the real attacker hidden somewhere nearby.
He cycled mana through several present patterns – the world flickering as he altered saturation and spectrum attempting to spot the hidden attacker.
“Those of heaven cannot be damaged for they are a world apart from mortals!”
That…
Troy stopped. A world apart. Was she even in the surroundings? The real surroundings? Or was it deeper than that.
Was she…in the shadowlands instead?
…
Troy flexed his mana core and felt the cool touch of his power rush out of his stomach and coat his entire body. Bile briefly flickered in the back of his throat as if he were vomiting up his core…and then suddenly he was mana. His physical body and mana-soul had swapped places.
With a glance he dove for the nearest shadow and slipped into the flipside of the world.
High above the entire sky was pure blinding white. All of space alight and burning bright enough to sear Troy’s eyes to bits – if he weren’t made of mana and coated in protective dark mana . The sun was nearly hidden – a solid planet instead of a ball of fire – and it cast a weak shadow across the world barely giving visibility in the all-pervasive light.
Troy raised a hand and pushed dark mana to it feeling his hand twitch as it darkened into a black strong enough to leak into the surroundings. Slowly his dark-source began to block out some of the blinding white. He cast shadows, his source immiting whatever the opposite of illumination was – dim? Darken to turn white into sight? Ingloominate? Cringe. This is why Troy didn't say things out loud.
Shadows spread from Troy casting dark on the surroundings and revealing a towering structure above the area.
The shadowlands were not a 1:1 match for the flip side of reality. Where the deep pit they were digging was located in the real world, here there was a tower – ebony bricks reaching up into the sky.
Where the golden figure was there was a large platform – pitch black legs reaching down into the soil.
It looked almost like a depiction of baba yaga’s house – a platform on four chicken legs covered in slings and bags of supplies.
On top of the platform an unarmored woman stood – her eyes glazed and unfocused as if looking at some distant view.
Her voice was the same however – “Heaven’s gaze shall find all” she shouted appearing to notice that Troy had disappeared from the dome.
Before she could change her vision to notice that her “heaven” was the same as Troy’s shadowland, he had already conjured and charged a brilliant powershot. Light compressed out of the surroundings as he ripped free light into a jagged arrow.
In this dimension he had near unlimited power as long as he had enough strength and stamina to wrestle with it.
Releasing the shot as soon as he was able, Troy watched as it blasted across the distance and ripped through the woman’s head with enough force to fling her body off the platform. The entire structure violently began to shake with her no longer holding it together – squiggly lines of black vibrating out into the surroundings. Troy dodged a falling bag of clinking items as he ran towards the body, his form blurring as the light around him boosted his movement and the space rippled.
He quickly passed under the shaking structure and charged a second arrow nearly for free.
As soon as he reached the fallen woman, Troy released his second arrow – the charged shot impacting her body before he realized she was already dead.
Finally.
Finally he got a hit in.
Troy let out the breath he had been holding and grabbed the corpse. Turning he spotted a position where a shadow in reality overlapped a shadow here and blurred back towards his friends.
As soon as he was out of the shadowlands Troy felt his body invert back to physicality, everything sore. His domain activation cost a lot and that cost ballooned when surrounded by the light of that world.
If he could strengthen anything it would be that. The woman clearly stayed there for much longer than him – it looked like she had been living there. Hiding away from danger and attacking the real world while staying safe in the flipside…
It was almost like she was casting shadows into reality? He hadn’t had time to truly study what she had been doing.
“Nice” a voice cut through Troys introspection.
Troy started and looked up. James had returned dragging the two bodies of the first attackers.
He had raised a hand for a high five as soon as he saw the matching body in Troy's hand.
Troy looked at his kill than across at his friend a smile blooming.
“Nice” he nodded back.
It was nice having friends.
----------------------------------------
---Maddy---
Days passed punctuated by an increasing number of human attackers. Attackers murdered and tossed into the pit – each shaving off massive amounts of nutrition the dungeon needed to grow.
Most attackers escaped before it hit that point which made sense. They'd had several practice zones to learn how not to die and knew to retreat when they were outmatched.
The attackers didn't all come one at a time to be murdered – the hardest day was perhaps the 4th as that was the day a whole raid party of 10 people attacked them.
It was a giant free for all on the attacker's side, but their group worked well together and managed to keep their position while the raid was clearly 3-4 groups combining their strengths in an attempt to stop them.
Four of the attackers died before the group pulled back shouting obscenities. Maddy had planted seeds on all of them with an empowered shout and those seeds remained slowly digging into them sprouting death mana .
They probably could have cleansed themselves but Troy had killed both of their healers in the initial clash and Maddy was merciless in activating her seeds fueled with the death energy from those first four to kill the final six.
This was probably the first time Maddy noticed a massive change to her personality.
They killed people. Her group. They killed attacker after attacker – over a dozen bodies, murdered just because they stood in the group’s way.
...and Maddy...felt nothing?
It took several days before Maddy’s self reflection reached a worrying level. It finally cumulated – crystalized as barely considered ideas all came together in one rush. Thoughts she’d ignored and shoved into separate eyes in the hope they would keep them contained.
Thoughts she’d knew but had pretended she hadn’t. Thoughts she’d already dwelled on and thought she had moved past.
It was simple.
Maddy realized she probably hadn't ever cared.
She thought she should care.
She had thought she should care – or in more detail she had decided that a good person would care and then decided she wanted to be a good person and tried to convince herself that she cared.
But she didn’t.
And the reason she didn’t, wasn’t even because of her new race as easy as it would be to blame that. No she was still the same person despite that.
She had never cared.
Her new race – her new existence as a fae. As a creature of stories…it made her feel like she was pretending to be herself. “She” was actually something else – a collection of minds working perfectly together and while puppeting her body and interacting with others she…was faking “it”. Maddy was “acting” like herself – like someone on a stage reading from lines in a script without truly feeling anything she acted out.
This heavy heavy disassociation slowly disappeared as the days progressed – as she healed from her domain activation and regrew her “reality” and sense of self.
But deep down that feeling remained. She didn’t care they were trampling on others.
Maddy knew deep down she was probably a bad person. She was working with the "demon lord" threatening the stability of the world for self profit.
And yet…she no longer cared what others thought about her. She had killed that part of herself – that part pining for approval.
She reaffirmed that she wasn’t a soulless monster – she cared about her friends and that wasn’t fake. That wasn’t an act.
They were killing those who attacked them – and that helped. They were Defense. They were being attacked first.
But that didn’t have to be a shield she could hide behind. Didn’t have to be justification she used to pretend they were good people.
It was strangely freeing. Freeing to acknowledge and discard the last bits of the act.
Maddy was free.