Cylindrical in shape, the tower stretched towards the sky with numerous floors acting as layers within it. At its heart was the summoning room. A space with an extremely high ceiling, no walls or excess rooms, and a floor in the shape of a circle perfectly fitting the diameter of the tower. The stairs reaching for the next floor above wrapped around the edge of the rooms, providing the most floor surface area possible for a massive sigil that was carved into the stone. Even the walls had sigils, all dug into the rock. There were enough to wrap around the room, all of them interlocking or overlapping in some way, with lines of power connecting them to the massive network of magic circles on the floor.
In that very room, dozens of corpses lay scattered, their skin thin and pale. Their bodies looked odd, greenish, and they each had multiple lacerations across main arterial points. All deep cuts meant to sever the biggest highways of blood flow to drain them entirely of every drop of the red liquid. Splatters of blood soaked into the rock beneath their bodies. The lines of the mana circle they lay scattered within filled with the several liters of the liquid, giving the room a disgusting red tone and a foul stench.
Books were similarly scattered around the room, their pages scribbled upon, rabbit eared, and creased from frequent use. Some which were too close to the killings of the sacrifices were stained red. A minor mistake which had caused some of the precious resource to be wasted but not enough to threaten the ritual.
At the center of the circle, a woman dressed in white stood with a knife and another book. Her green eyes stared at a series of words, verses of power, and the knife dangled in her dainty fingers. Fingers that were red, black, and sported cuts of their own. Evidence of her effort thus far. Oddly, her white gown was untainted. Not a drop of defilement was on the cloth, giving her a near virgin-like aura. If not for those dirtied hands, one might think her a lovely young lady. Her hair was tied into a neat set of interlocking braids and she even wore a veil over her face. One that was sheer and similar to that of a bridal veil. However, it only covered down to her eyes, allowing her ruby red lips to be clearly visible as she whispered the words she read.
Beneath her feet, the sigil pulsed. She turned the page and continued the lengthy spell.
The blade in her right hand twisted as she snapped it up and she extended her left arm. Without hesitation, she cut across her forearm to split the skin and knelt to the floor. The blood leaked from the fresh wound, dripping into several runes she had surrounded herself with. As the liquid touched each rune, they illuminated, flashing brightly and reacting with thirst for more. She provided more blood, cutting her arm a second time to increase the outward flow. Yet, though wincing and shivering, she continued her chant.
The addition of her own blood to the large magic circle caused the room as a whole to react. The runes, sated, stopped pulsing but maintained a bright red glow. The circle around them ignited and started a chain reaction through the entire circle, one that spread outwards quickly as the blood within its lines ionized. When the main circle was alight, the lines leading up to the sigils on the walls came to life, igniting those upward sigils as well.
In moments, the entire room was glowing a deep, ruby red.
The chant intensified, her voice echoing though she spoke softly. Her feet, bare, staggered for a brief moment as black tendrils reached out from the runes. The tendrils wrapped around her feet, ankles, and midway up her calves, rooting her in place and digging into her flesh. Thorns punctured her skin, bleeding her, and they reached into her skin to latch onto her mana flow. She moaned, the sensation hot to her skin and scalding her entire body. Her thighs pressed together in a lascivious motion as her cloth wettened. Yet she continued to chant and read, even as her vision hazed.
Above her, the room began to distort. Power collected in a sphere, transparent at first but slowly coming into view as mana collected. Sapped from her body, the corpses, the walls, and even the very world around the tower, mana coagulated into a massive blue sphere. One that rolled and ebbed, grotesquely stretching and bubbling as more and more added to the viscous glob.
The tendrils reached deeper, digging further into her skin as she eventually closed the bood. Having memorized the remaining verses, she tossed the book away. She cut two additional lines into her right forearm, allowing both limbs to leak freely down onto the floor as she raised them up. An offering most delicious for the circle beneath her feet. The veins and arteries beneath her skin blackened, her skin staining as the tendrils poisoned her very being, preparing her as a host for the creature she was calling forth. Her mana flow burned within her body, her magical power scalding her as it was slowly transformed into a proper fuel source.
Speaking its name, she called it forth.
“Hail, Vysgar! Hail, Fae of Creation and Travesty! Hail, Being of Mischief and Deviltry!” She shouted, her lips glistening as her eyes stained black. The green color within them faded.
“I beseech thee! Come forth to this Virgin Land and reveal to it the truth of the World!”
The sigil pulsed and a deep groan creaked through the air as the tower strained. The blue clot of mana distorted, twisting inward as the collection collapsed on itself. The lines of power throughout the room intensified in shine and glow, flooding the space in an overwhelming aura.
Then, silence. The very air stood still as the collected mana turned black. A single orb that swallowed all light floated in place. Nearly impossible to spot, barely the size of one’s fingertip, the orb squeezed further inward.
The sound of something shattering ripped through the tower, followed by a deathly screech as the world ripped open. A tear in the fabric of the world split open, forced so by the claws of a creature. Black nails attached to thin, bony fingers gripped onto the space and pulled open the Overworld’s skin. Beyond the tear, a dark world was visible only briefly. Red skies. Burned trees. Towers of flesh and a scorched land. Power leaked through the rip in space, a dark haze that poisoned the air.
The creature, a tan skinned imp-like being, split apart the rift further so that it could fully pull itself through the gap. Its body was tiny, barely two foot tall, with hardly any muscle to speak of. It was bipedal with two lanky arms and floated in the air with the help of four, webbed wings stretching out of its back. Its feet were cleft, hardened almost like hooves but not quite so. Its hands were mainly nailed with only four fingers per. Its head was much like a Goblin’s. Oval in shape with its face jutting outwards in an ugly fashion. It lacked hair and its skin was dry, thin, and creased. Its eyes were black with yellow rings for irises. Its mouth was wide but its teeth, though razor sharp, were sparse. Its tongue was long and hardly fit in its mouth.
A Dark Fae had been called forth and the rift, unable to maintain itself, closed naturally on its own.
The creature descended quickly, its wings struggling to keep it afloat in the new world, and the creature noisily tumbled to the ground. It landed with a thud on the magic circle, cursing in its own language and smacking the ground out of frustration as it tumbled about. The magic circle lost its power, having expended all of the mana within the blood filling its lines, and the tendrils crumbled away. The woman, freed from their grip, fell to her knees. Her arms fell limp by her sides, numbed. However, she was smiling. Sweat trickled down her brow, her cloth clung to her slick skin, and her knees rubbed together as she admired the creature she’d essentially birthed into the Overworld.
“I… I did it,” she said with effort, her chest heaving as she attempted to breathe. Her lungs ached and her entire body was on fire. Her vision was narrowing with each breath and she could feel her consciousness slipping. She fought that fading sensation, aware that there was still one final step to be completed.
The creature in front of her hissed and grumbled, its speech a garbled mess of words, clicks, and grunts. It clawed at the ground and pushed itself onto its feet, stumbling as it struggled to find a proper way to stand. Its wings fluttered, aiding in its balance until it could finally keep itself from tripping over.
“My liege,” the woman called out. Her voice caught its attention and the creature whirled around. She bowed her head, but the motion caused her balance to falter. She fell forward, her upper body arching as her face smacked the stone. “My… My body is yours! I offer it to you as sustenance to survive within this world!”
The creature stared at her, its eyes blinking oddly as thin membranes moved from right to left, rather than top to bottom. Its head tilted, then its feet pattered on the stone as it approached her body. With a swipe, the creature sliced its hand through her right shoulder, cutting a chunk of flesh from her and eliciting a mix of whimpering, moaning, and stifled yells that she struggled to contain. The creature devoured her meat, crunching on the skin and muscle he’d cut from her. His eyes glistened, then his head twisted in the other direction.
“You. Human. Creature of Blight world. Sacrifice. Summoned me?” The creature’s voice twisted as its jaws tapped together. The sounds were broken, distorted, and twisted. A gross form of speech that the Fae was practically forcing out.
“Yes! I have summoned you here! Please, use my body so that you may survive and bring terror to this place!” She pleaded with the creature, struggling to raise her head to look at the creature even as she bled. She was able to raise her face to be just above the Fae’s, her lips still stretching into a glorious smile of pride as she looked at the toddly-sized creature.
Without saying another word to her, the Fae hobbled forward. It looked up into her blackened eyes, blinked twice, then its left hand swiped across her stomach. Her innards spilled out, the flesh easily cut open by its razored hands. She howled in pain and toppled over onto her side, her arms still numb. The creature tore into her flesh with those hands, cutting her apart as it ate the offered meat. Her angelic voice sang a harmony of agony as she was devoured.
There was no contract made. The Fae took her mana source for itself, ripping it from her insides and stole it away.
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A mere hour prior to the completion of the summoning, the Priestess approached the outside of the tower. She could sense the change in the air and the weight of the mana floating around her was almost suffocating. What made the sensation worse was the knowledge that she wasn’t even in the worst of it. In front of her, containing much of the mana gathered around, was a massive domed barrier that protected the entire tower and sectioned off the land surrounding it.
Walking through it was impossible, and every living creature was naturally pushed away from its edges. The barrier itself had no color, though it was opaque and distorted the view through it, but the mana within was clear to see. A blue, murky haze. Infected by the oversaturation of the magical essence, the ground spurted several Magishrooms, or mushrooms imbued with mana within them.
They burst from the rock and earth, leeching off the abundance of mana like a parasite. They clung to every surface and ate up the nutrients in the ground as a result, killing off much of the flora in the area. Even so, the soil wasn’t so damaged that it couldn’t be repaired. Not yet. She still had time.
She clenched her teeth, her jaw tensing up with frustration as she stared at the reflection of herself in the barrier. “All because He wanted to waste time,” she rumbled. Power collected in her hands, focused into her palms as she set her hands on the barrier. It stiffened beneath her touch, resisting the pressure she placed against it. Shutting her eyes, she began to chant. Speaking the Demon’s Tongue as she injected her mana into the barrier. Reciting the Words of Power that would dispel the massive shield, she reached into her mana flow and spread it across the barrier. Several sigils emerged to get in her way, but she nimbly wrapped her mana around them, encircling the interference spells to root them in place.
However, she was slow, painfully slow. To start, dispelling barriers wasn't a strong suit of hers. Anything Dark Magic related was far from her realm of expertise. Add in the sheer size of the thing and the Priestess found herself questioning the feasibility of her action. From a scholarly standpoint, it would take at least seven or eight mages combined to overwhelm the barrier she was dealing with. The Priestess had enough mana to deal with it, but maintaining control of that mana, stabilizing it, and then breaking down the network of sigils supporting it all at once was a taxing endeavor.
She only hoped she had enough time.
Time that seemed to be slipping right through her fingers. Dozens of minutes passed as she worked to envelope the barrier and the mana within it started to act. She watched as the haze of essence started to swirl, twisting in a gradual whirl around the tower. The mist began to feed in through the windows and the walls, disappearing within the stone cylinder as the ritual inside began. The Priestess wasn’t even halfway done with her work before she realized that she had no time left. At this point, even if she shattered the barrier, the mana wouldn’t disperse.
“I’ll need to force my way in,” she decided, unable to wait any longer. The mana within the barrier was vanishing, quick. If she played the patient game, the Fae would be summoned before she would break through.
Acknowledging the urgency, the Priestess switched tactics. She shut her eyes and cinched her mana down against the barrier, digging her grip into the boundary wall like a cat clinging to cloth. The mana she had been feeding into the barrier collected around her fingertips, heating them and enhancing their strength. She sharpened her nails then shoved them into the barrier, cutting the very lines of power that made up the wall in front of her.
Gripping it, she used the mana laid across the barrier as a massive pry bar. She pulled and ripped, severing the lines of power straight up and down in front of her, shoving her mana through the thin gap she’d formed. Then, using her mana, she peeled it open, pulling the barrier apart with sheer force. It was ugly and the mana within the barrier began to destabilize, the spell fighting to keep itself together. Loud cracks and snaps echoed into the air as the edges of the barrier lashed out, reaching for one another. The Priestess’s face contorted with the effort, her body soaking through with sweat from the pressure on her mana flow.
She pulled open the barrier enough to fit her dainty frame through and a little bit extra, careful to give herself a hole large enough to pass through. Once inside, she cut her connection with the mana she’d stretched out and released the barrier’s edges. Without the resistance holding it apart, the barrier snapped back together, the hole closing as the barrier repaired itself.
The Priestess let out a huff, collecting herself before looking up at the tower. She followed the mana, tracing it with her eyes to see around which level it was collecting it. To her surprise, it wasn’t the top but more the middle. Or slightly above the middle. There must have been a special room made for it there, likely also to act as a potential cage for the Fae if necessary. An interesting placement.
Catching herself staring, the Priestess snapped out of her staring contest with the stone pillar and headed towards the entrance. Her leather soles squashed Magishroom after Magishroom, smushing the parasitic fungus beneath every step. The closer she became to the tower, the more plentiful the fungus was. It was a vile sight. The density of the mana in the air made her queasy too, causing her stomach to lurch as it plugged her nose and fussed with her mana flow.
Without hesitation, the Priestess blew down the door and stepped inside. She was greeted with silence. The room she entered was empty aside from a large staircase leading to a set of double doors. Several candles burned around the stone room, giving plenty of ambient light she could use to see, but there was also plenty of darkness concealing much of the room from her normal sight. Utilizing Sensory Magic, she was able to determine that she was alone.
At least, that’s what she thought. Upon stepping across a certain threshold, the door behind her slammed closed and several sigils flared to life around the room. A trap had sprung, catching her in the middle of it. The sigils fed mana into a dozen or so piles of bones, bringing a handful of skeletons to life. Their bodies snapped together and they rose to their feet, plucking rusted weapons and shields off the floor to use as equipment.
“I don’t have time for you lot,” the Priestess spat. She stepped forward into the room and her fingers crackled, the sigils on the backs of her hands igniting with power as she utilized Thunder magic to deal with the skeletons.
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Lightning jumped from her fingertips in the directions she pointed. The skeletons exploded upon impact, their bodies shattering and their bones scattering across the room. Some who stood too close to others were caught in the blasts, knocking them off their feet or causing the lightning to jump to them and cause a secondary explosion. In seconds, the Priestess dismantled the trap and ascended the stairs. Using her magic again, she overpowered a sigil that was used to seal the doors and knocked them out of her way. They opened inwards, their hinges snapping as the metal bent in the wrong direction. The large doors fell to the ground noisily, their dull thuds hammering through the quiet tower.
The far room was nothing more than a large swirling staircase in the middle of two open thresholds that lead to connected passageways. She ignored the passages and ascended the stairs, wrapping around the stone pillar hastily. It reached up only three floors before she was forced to step off it, as the stairs ended. Another set of double doors greeted her and she once more blew through them, breaking the seal and then breaking the doors.
On the far side, four suits of armor stood guard in the center of the room. Triggered by the doors being opened, the armors pulled the massive swords in front of them out of the rock floor and took fighting stances. The Priestess, unphased, entered the room and triggered her Thunder magic once more. Sending a coordinated array of lightning spells at the Suits.
However, unlike the skeletons, the Suits raised their swords and blocked the spells. Sigils on the broad sides of the swords triggered, sapping the power out of the spells and scattering any excess into the air. The blades they carried began to glow a soft yellow, revealing that they’d converted the offensive spell into their own strength.
The Priestess didn’t miss a step. Rather than trigger the Thunder magic on her hands again, she fed mana into a sigil on her forearms. She snapped her fingers, sparking bright white flames that singed her clothes. The flames leaked into the air, coagulating into dense spheres. She grabbed one of them, crushed it to change its shape, then tossed it with a casual lob into the middle of the room. Two others followed, both of them rolling around to the feet of the Knights.
The creatures paused for a moment to look down as the balls of flame flashed. The explosions that followed destroyed not just the pieces of armor but melted the floor and caused the very rock to deform and blacken. Heat washed across the room, igniting several pieces of cloth banners that dangled around the support pillars. They burned brightly, the flames quickly spreading across the cloth.
With the room cleared, the Priestess continued on. Oh, how she disliked such violent measures. The flashy and excessive spells were easy to use but the collateral damage always made her more conscious of the potential negative effects of magic use on the environment. A single, misused spell could change the landscape itself, tearing up trees and bushes. A wrongly used flame spell might even spark a forest fire, something she loathed to see in her forest. Due to the nature of the tower, she felt safe with her choice to let loose a little. However, she could tell she was holding back out of instinct. Anything more than what she’d just used and she feared she might take the entire tower down.
Before she ascended to the next floor, she paused to look back at the room. The craters in the floor. The burning banners. The scattered pieces of armor. Evidence of the whirlwind that was the enraged Guardian.
“No, I can do more.” The ground, though damaged, hadn’t caused the structural integrity of the room to drop. She certainly hadn’t left it in perfect condition and another few explosions might have caused a hole in the ground, but that was the point--she could up the intensity another step or two and she would still be safe. If the Fae turned out to be a higher level creature than she was used to, knowing the Tower could handle the required punishment was helpful.
Reaffirming that fact quietly to herself, the Priestess continued her ascent.
The trials slowing her down only became more taxing the higher she went. Knights and Skeletons became summoned creatures or layers of barrier sigils meant to turn her progress into a slog. The Priestess cut them down, ripping through the various animals and monsters set in front of her. She overwhelmed the barriers with excessive mana rather than dissolve the sigils themselves, breaking them with brute force. The method lacked her usual graceful touch but with the mana in the air starting to dissipate, there wasn’t time to be so particular.
Midway up the next set of stairs, the Priestess felt the pressure on her body change--vanish. The disgusting grip of mana that clung to her skin disappeared and silence fell over the tower. The lights guiding her way were snuffed out. A chill ran down her spine as the temperature dropped. The stone she placed a hand on to balance herself grew ice cold.
A shattering noise ripped through the tower followed by a vile stench of rot that assaulted her nose. The wretched aroma made her stomach contort and her throat clutched itself as she instinctively choked, holding back a gag that certainly would’ve turned into a purge. Her entire body felt rotten, her very skin turning clammy and slick with imaginary grime. A sensation she hadn’t ever felt before. Her knees wobbled and she felt her weight tip, her center of balance failing her as she leaned against the wall.
The rift had been opened and something sinister had emerged from it. Something she feared she might not be capable of handling anymore.
Even so…
“Even so,” she grit her teeth together and clutched her robes, clinging to the fabric to try and pull herself from the creature’s grip. She forced herself to take a step, then another, then another. One by one, she ascended the stairs until she reached the next floor.
There was no choice but to keep moving, to keep walking and climbing to meet the danger that had emerged. The Fae’s presence was a curse on the Overworld. It was an anomaly that required exorcizing immediately before it could poison the world itself. And if such a creature had emerged, one capable of nearly pushing her to her knees with just its sheer presence, then there was little time to waste on her own fears.
A Guardian had no liberty to be afraid. Though she shook in her very shoes and every step was forced, she regretfully continued forward. She crossed another floor, passing by several piles of bones that had collapsed in on themselves. On the next, piles of ash and corpses of various monsters lay scattered about. Floor after floor, evidence that the summoner of all the various creatures and beasts was dead.
Upon rising another, the Priestess found herself practically stumbling into her destination. Midway up the stairs, she noticed the walls were stained red with traces of blood leaking down from above. The air was thick with a haze of red and she could taste the iron on her tongue. She stepped up high enough to see over the floor and peered into the room beyond, greeted by the grotesque sight. Several corpses lay scattered about, almost organized in a way, with one lying motionless in the center. Each of the bodies was eaten away at, with chunks of flesh missing and their innards ripped from their stomachs.
Looking at the floor, the Priestess noticed the traces of lingering mana left over and the markings--the summoning circle. She grit her teeth and reached for her mana, gripping it firmly as she climbed the final few steps. She scanned the walls, the high ceiling, and even looked around at the different corpses. She searched for the creature, the small black body that was her target. The creature responsible for all of this in the first place.
However, it was gone. Missing. Not a trace of it. She walked slowly around the edge of the room, looking everywhere she possibly could. She even triggered her Mana Sight. However, the air was tainted. The life essence floating in the air had been poisoned by the creature’s presence and all she could see were distortions and the corrupted flow of mana.
Unable to find the creature in the air or on the walls, she looked at the bodies. She scanned each of them, looking for life signs or traces of left over mana. Nothing was left, however, and they lay cold, dark, and dead. The Priestess frowned and stopped moving entirely. Concern washed over her followed by a brief fit of terror as she realized the creature might have escaped.
“No. I couldn’t have,” she muttered. She curled her hands into fists and walked into the room, approaching the corpse in the middle of the circle. “It still should be here. It wouldn’t just run off. What about the contract? It should still have a master or a servant of some kind.”
Cautious, with her wits about her and her Mana Sense spreading through the room, she stepped up to the body and peered down at it. A female figure dressed in a white garb. Blood stained the fabric and pooled beneath her, staining the stone. The circle beneath her was burnt, the fluid filling the lines thick and gel-like. The mana within the blood had been expended and it was drying out.
“You… should be alive,” the Priestess whispered, identifying the dead woman as the one who’d conducted the summoning. Though her face was mangled, there was no denying that she was the Witch of this tower. Kneeling down, the Priestess turned the Witch over onto her back. Doing so exposed the hole in her stomach, her ripped open chest, and several gouges in her legs where chunks of meat had been extracted. She’d been eaten alive, likely.
Still, there was no sign of the Fae.
“Where did it go?”
An explosion rocked the tower, quaking the floor and causing loose rocks to tumble down from above. The Priestess looked skyward, listening as two more thuds rattled off in the distance. Her Mana Sense wasn’t reaching the next floor so she couldn’t tell what was happening but she had an inkling. The Fae must have been looking for an escape route and likely went up, rather than down. In its ascent, she assumed it was now running into traps and the summoned beasts that the Witch had gathered. Good. Those things would slow it down.
The Priestess stepped over the corpse and hurried to the stairs, her shoes clicking on the ground as she ran. The hem of her flowing dress naturally flowed upwards, the magic within the fabric pulling the skirt away from her ankles to allow for ease of movement. She rushed up the circling staircase, racing towards those explosions as the tower itself began to sway and crack. The walls were being hammered by those magic spells and the Priestess began to worry for its structural integrity. If the Fae let off anything crazy, the whole tower might just fall down on them.
A heavier thud than the others sounded off and smoke billowed out of the distant threshold leading to the next floor. The Priestess stopped and braced against the wall, staring towards the doorway as more smoke, more dust, blew out of it. Three more powerful blasts wracked the tower and the ceiling began to crack, splintering in several spots as the stone started to give way.
A final impact caused a small hole to open. The fracture chained across the rest of the floor and brought the entire ceiling down. Hunks of stone and debris collapsed from above, tumbling toward the distant magic circle below. The Priestess, careful to avoid getting caught in the mess, pressed her back against the wall. A hunk of rock smacked the staircase a few steps above her, knocking away the next ten stairs as collateral.
Within the mess of stone and dust, several fireballs were thrown across the room, blowing apart rock and mortar. “You…” Her Mana Sense flared, picking up two bodies moving quickly in the mess. One of them was a black blob, leaking mana that distorted the space around it. The other was a familiar purple stain that made her stomach tighten with its foul nature.
The Apostle.
She watched him, his eyes alight with power. His face was a stoic wall of calm. His hands clutched his swords, holding them firmly within his gloved grip. A black ponytail whipped in the wind behind his head as he bounced through the falling debris, almost casually avoiding the black balls of mana being flung at him by the imp-like Fae. Without even muttering a single incantation, bright blue balls of flame, spears of fire, and cones of hurricane winds ripped over his shoulders towards the Fae. The spears exploded upon impact within anything larger than a pebble. The balls of flame scorched the very air before turning the stone black when they struck the walls. The Wind Cones blew apart the rocks, shattering the stone and clearing pathways for him to move through.
The Fae backpedaled away from those spells, dodging to and fro, weaving through the stone debris as it displayed its own nimbleness. However, the Apostle was incessant and brutish in his assault. An unrelenting force of rage that destroyed any form of cover the Fae tried to use.
The Fae ducked behind a large chunk of rock and the Apostle kicked off another. Wind whipped at his feet, causing him to accelerate. Two spears of fire blasted apart the rock the Fae had hid behind and the Apostle dove through the open space. Blade ready, he swung into the space beyond. The Fae’s eyes opened wide and it tried to move backwards, yet the updraft caused its movement to be cut short. The tip of the Apostle’s sword sliced through its chest and a follow-up spell burned off its left arm, sending the Fae spiraling backwards into the path of another hunk of floor.
His own momentum a mess, the Apostle twisted and used wind magic to stabilize his fall, boosting himself back and up so he could step onto a cluster of stone bricks. He looked down, looked up, then moved quickly, assessing his position in relation to both the floor below and the rocks falling on him from above. Without hesitation he jumped upwards and bounded through the remaining debris, escaping the potential demise of being crushed as he wove his way to the safety of the stairs and the wall.
Free from the danger, the Apostle peered down towards the floor below, watching the crash of the two floors colliding. The Fae emerged just before the rock he was pinched beneath hit but the dainty figure was swallowed up by dust. Something that didn’t bother the Apostle in the least. Before the Fae could emerge again, he triggered a dozen spears of flame and threw them at the Fae’s last known position. Their high velocity ripped apart the dust haze, scattering the clouds to clear his view. The explosions smoked out the Fae, forcing the creature up and into the air again.
“Apo-!” The Priestess tried to call out to him, hoping to maybe get them to work together in some capacity but he was already moving again. Like a hawk descending on its prey, he lunged off the stairwell and shot down towards the Fae. Was he fearless, or just ignorant to the danger the Fae presented? She wasn’t sure but getting his attention wasn’t going to be easy.
The Fae hissed and chucked several black spells towards him. Black balls of coagulated mana. Tendrils that whipped and cut at the air. Spells that were easily deflected by the Apostle’s own spells or cut through by the blades in his hands, their glistening edges hacking apart the Fae’s magic with ease.
“How is he…?” The smoothness of his actions. The quick reactions. The decision making. Not a second’s hesitation from the Apostle was allowing him to not just keep pace with the nimble and hectic spell casting of the Fae, but he was closing the distance between them.
A stray spell the Apostle cast whipped through the air, screaming passed her. The heat radiating from the ball of flame took her breath and burned at the roof of her mouth. She felt her legs quake as the density of mana curdling within the spell revealed just how much power he was tossing around. There wasn’t just one explosive rune inside of it either, but several, which caused a popping effect when the spell smacked the wall above her. At least five explosions rattled off, showering her in waves of buffeting heat and stone shrapnel.
She used her hood to protect her face and stepped back for a moment to use the stairs above her as cover. When the explosions ceased and the air calmed, she stepped forward again and looked down. The tower was crumbling around them, the walls were splintering and the floor was falling away little by little. The Fae was hurt and the Apostle’s cloak was singed but neither was above to corner the other. The Fae’s wings and tiny body made it a difficult target to hit, while the Apostle’s firepower was acting as a shield.
He wouldn’t catch the Fae like that.
“But why is it not running out of mana?” Aside from the Apostle’s combat prowess, the strangest part was the Fae’s actions. It threw spells as if it didn’t have to worry about depleting its very life source. There hadn’t been any evidence of a contract being made with the Witch or any of the sacrifices that had been lying around. So where was this power coming from?
“Wait… Did it just…?” Thinking hard, she recalled the sight of the Witch. Her stomach and chest had been torn open. Instead of forming a contract, had the Fae eaten her mana source and simply taken it? It would certainly be an explanation but the Fae weren’t usually so desperate or creative. Though they needed a source of mana from the Overworld, they typically weren’t so intelligent or feral.
Which meant…
Her eyes widened and she quickly pulled herself together. As the two brawled, she rushed down the steps, racing towards them as the tower around them began to give way. The Apostle deflected another spell then jumped skyward to avoid three simul-cast tendrils that ripped apart the Tower’s wall. He landed on the steps beneath her, so she took the opportunity to yell.
“Apostle!” She shouted. His head tilted back as he recognized her.
“Guardian,” he spat back, quickly snapping his eyes back to the Fae so as to not lose track of the threat.
“It’s a Fae Baron! They’re smarter and more dangerous than usual Fae! We need to retre-”
“Perfect,” the Apostle huffed. “That makes this even more worthwhile.” Without another moment of pause, he launched back towards the Fae. He swatted two tendrils aside, cutting them in two before filling the space with massive spells of wind that broke the floor and wall.
“You idiot!” She shouted, clenching her fists as she watched him.
A Dark Fae Baron. A creature of mid-level intelligence similar to that of an Overworld’s Kobold, or that of a Goblin Champion. Wise enough to put together low level strategies and a magic competency on par with fledgling mages. To make up for their lack of smarts, they were instinctive, witty, and highly adaptive. While their magic itself was rather mediocre in complexity they could cast dozens of spells very quickly and didn’t need incantations like the lower level Fae. A prolonged fight with a Baron would inevitably tilt the odds in its favor. Not because of some kind of well thought out plan but because the Baron would learn.
The Apostle dove through another pair of tendrils and fired off a trio of Fire Spears, tumbling in behind them as the Baron weaved through the spells. The Baron then dipped out of the way, avoiding a slash from the Apostle’s sword. The Apostle stepped and twisted his hips, swinging again only to cut air. Two Wind Cones tore through the space after but the Baron knocked them away with a tendril. When the Apostle moved to kick off and assault the Baron again, the Baron’s lips twisted.
A tendril shot up from the ground beneath the Apostle’s feet and snatched his ankle. Surprise washed over his face as the Apostle was yanked backwards and smashed against the wall. He held firmly onto his blades even as he impacted the stone, yet the Tendril yanked him immediately down onto the floor. The elven sword in his left hand fell free and clattered away. Before he could recover, a trio of black spells smashed into his position.
The Priestess grit her teeth and, for the first time, moved before her mind could stop her. Without a thought of what she might do, she leapt off the stairs and jumped towards the duo below.