Alrik the Shackler nebulously could be called a human, I suppose. He looked like a man with sunken cheeks, pallid skin, and thin sparse hair. Dull golden light seemed to pulse through his veins, in contrast to the dark green, almost black, spectral energies that flowed through the leather and bone armor he wore. If this man represented Amon, I wanted nothing to do with Amon.

Miyuki reappeared from the pillar of obsidian that Xian, the Urmahlullu, was impaled to. One of her swords severed the spire of dark, glassy rock, while the other four shot ahead to attack Alrik.

“Shadow Bind,” Alrik muttered contemptuously at the Kitsune. Miyuki locked in place mid-air, but her swords didn’t. Four of the blades slashed at the vile figure of Alrik, but they passed through him as if he were an insubstantial figure. Each slash of Miyuki’s blades did add a touch of blue-white foxfire that burned the man, but they were short lived and failed to immolate the villain.

Arx, tell Chrys to heal Xian if she can, and figure out a way to free Miyuki. I didn’t want to draw attention to Chrys if I could help it, so shouting was out of the question.

Nothing in my repertoire would allow me to free Miyuki, but I activated Galvanize to its full strength, black lightning and gusts of the Ebon Gale grew dramatically in intensity and the world slowed down a little as my ability to perceive and process the world around me grew by leaps and bounds.

I leaped into the air, augmenting my leap with Modify Vector, and tried to end the fight before it could even begin, thrusting the blade of Delirium of Ruin right for Alrik’s heart. The strange dark green energies that swarmed the man made a sheath over his armor, a sheath that the blade of my spear couldn’t cut. Every microsecond the impossibly sharp tip of my spear thrust against Alrik’s chest the energies that protected him dimmed dramatically, but then my upward momentum came to a complete halt, and I dropped back to the ground.

Delirium of Ruin had failed to cut something. I felt betrayed.

“Shadow bind,” Alrik hissed and power tried to grab me, but failed. The pale faced summoner scowled at me as his ability that held Miyuki so easily failed to grasp me at all.

“How!?” Alrik screamed at me in rage, as if he should be the one who was mad. “You’re a paltry Topaz, how could you destroy a third of my Legion in one blasted strike, AND resist Shadow bind?”

Maybe Delirium of Ruin hadn’t failed me after all.

A small rectangle of stone appeared underneath me in the sand, and I fell through my own doorway. The other side of the portal dropped me from over forty feet above Alrik, and I plunged towards him. Modify Vector let me control my velocity and much more importantly, direction. I braced my hold on Delirium of Ruin, now that I knew thrust attacks weren’t enough to pierce Alrik, and channeled black lightning into the tip of my spear.

“Shackles!” Alrik cried far too quickly, and skeletal fingers ripped through rents in the air to try and grasp me. They grasped for me, but I pulsed a powerful horizontal vortex of wind that obliterated the weak skeletal digits as I fell past them. Above me, a tornado began to form from the black winds of the Ebon Gale, their skittering mad whispers overwhelmed most other background noises.

I fell the last few feet, and suddenly spectral chains shot forth from Alrik’s body towards me. They had the speed and agility of snakes, there were dozens of them, and Instincts of the Gossamyr brayed loudly in my head that the chains were bad news, but abruptly the sirens in my head ended, as rectangular pieces of paper – no, they were made out of Miyuki’s blue-white foxfire, struck each chain and exploded them in bursts of foxfire.

I saw Miyuki had regained her battle stance on the ground, and her swords were already spiraling into the air towards Alrik for a follow up attack to my own. The card-like manifestations of her Foxfire formed in her left hand, which she kept free, and sailed towards targets with a will of their own. I felt a small stab of jealousy for the intricate beauty and artistic skills of her combat style. I felt like a brute by comparison.

When Delirium of Ruin hit the panicking Alrik this time, the aura around him dimmed to almost inexistence, but even with the addition of lightning and momentum, I failed to pierce his skin. I shifted my momentum in mid-air to kick at Alrik’s face, which seemed to stun him, and then shot towards the ground, rapidly deaccelerating just before my feet hit the ground. I had reached 1,936 out of 3,000 energy and we had barely begun the fight. I dismissed the tornado I had intended to leave active, to save some energy.

In the air, Alrik rubbed his nose then spat blood. I had broken his nose.

“I’ll torture you for eternity for that,” Alrik promised, but then five of Miyuki’s swords were upon him. Six wraiths separated from his back, and with ghost-flame swords they parried and intercepted all of Miyuki’s blades.

An immense magic circle filled the sky above the arena, and rapidly began to fill with fox-fire etched symbols. A flick of my attention showed Remy stood, his staff floating above his outstretched arms, casting the spell in the sky. I hoped it was to break the curse. Claire danced back and forth around Remy, dispatching skeletal knights, shadowy wraiths with ease, but a large death knight lumbered towards the two at the back of the horde.

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“Anclasst!” Alrik called, and the ground rumbled so severely I thought perhaps he had triggered the volcano. Instead, a giant made of wispy threads of anima coursing along bones rose. It was larger than the arena itself, and each of its arms ended in the skulls of immense reptiles. When the skulls were over the arena, red flames belched from the maws of the dragon skulls.

“Lex Talionis” I muttered and positioned myself in front of my companions. The flames bent around me, and back towards the dragon skulls. Only at the last minute did I have them shift to hit Alrik, who had the gall to float between the two huge jets of flame.

“I’ll handle Anclasst,” a deep, masculine voice said as a hand pat my shoulder. The figure that walked past me dwarfed me, and I was over six foot tall now, but it wasn’t even close. The lion had almost two feet in height over me. It seemed Chrys had finished healing Xian, no sign remained to show he’d been impaled only minutes ago.

Xian, the Urmahlullu man was not someone you might call tiny. The lower half of his body, which looked exactly like a lion’s body, went up almost five feet to the shoulders of his four feline limbs, and including the tail I guessed his feline lower body to be ten or eleven feet long with the tail. Then there was the human torso that rose above the feline lower half. He wore black plated armor that looked familiar to me, even though I couldn’t remember where I’d seen it. His sword was as long as his body, and it was styled similar to Miyuki’s only much larger, with a faint curve.

Xian lifted his head and roared. Power surged through the air, a faint golden shimmer surrounded Xian, myself, and my party. Then the insane bastard jumped, his front paws landing on the stunned Alrik’s shoulders and pushing him down into the arena floor hard, before he shot off like an arrow at the giant skeleton.

Alrik hit the ground hard, but he got right back up, and more wraiths flowed from his back to fly aggressively towards Miyuki, Chrys, and I. Many fought with ghost-flame swords, but others had axes, polearms, spears, bows, and one even had a staff. Clearly, these were enemies of Alrik’s who he had bound to service. Killing them, again, was probably the best thing to do.

On the north of the arena, Xian flicked his huge sword and battled the gigantic skeleton. On the heights, Remy continued to fill in the details of his curse break, and Claire had wiped out most of the horde but fought hard against a plate armored foe with a ebony greatsword. In the arena, Chrys threw three cylinders at Alrik which exploded into a liquid sea of fire that ignited Alrik and his minions alike and gave Miyuki and I a brief moment to rally.

“Go all out,” Miyuki told me as all six of her swords shimmered, and dark replicas flowed out of each blade, doubling her number of blades to twelve. I could almost, almost, hear the crescendo of whispers from the blades in the air, but it was just the dark gusts of the Ebon Gale playing with my mind.

Miyuki pointed the tip of her katana at Alrik, who finally doused the consuming flames Chrys had thrown, in time for him to see the blade point at him. I heard my hearts beat extra loudly, and a weird sensation flicker across my insides thanks to Instincts of the Gossamyr. I don’t know what skill Miyuki used, but I could hear her heartbeat thumping in time with the Gossamyr around us, with me, maybe even with Alrik, and then she took a step forward and slashed at Alrik, despite the distance between them.

A slash of fox fire flowed from her blade towards Alrik, the flames tiny yet intense, and all eleven of the dancing swords around Miyuki shot at him too. How Alrik intended to counter the attack, I didn’t know, would never know, because a copper cube at his feet exploded, and green flame burned his boots off in an instant and started on his flesh.

The circle in the sky finished, turned into golden light, and a pillar of bright, radiant energy fell upon Alrik. It illuminated him as blade after blade slashed at him, fire burned his feet, Xian obliterated his giant, and Claire finished off the death knight.

Alrik still wouldn’t fall.

“He’s offloading the damage to the spirits he has bound and hidden across the arena. There’s hundreds of them still. Look,” Arx Maxima couldn’t gesture, but it was as if she could draw in my vision as flows of energy between Alrik and his hidden minions crossed the arena in thick ribbons of anima.

“Grasp control of the tides, transfer the damage back to Alrik and the vitality elsewhere,” Arx Maxima instructed.

Now, this wasn’t the first time she had told me to do things that I didn’t know how to do. Every time she told me I could do something, she had been absolutely right, though. Lock Vector wouldn’t do what she wanted, neither would Modify.

I walked into the bright pillar of light with Alrik and punched him in the face with my left hand. At least, I’m sure that’s what it looked like. As his head fell back from the impact, my fingers opened and grasped all those ribbons, and squeezed.

“Transfer,” I muttered, and reversed the damage he took back to him, and shifted the flow of anima from his minions into myself. It felt like I drank five cups of tea, ate a gallon of honey, and had all the buffs in the world. The flow of life, of power, of that weird little element I knew so little about, anima, flowed into me. My hearts pounded out a thunderous drum beat, the mad winds of the Ebon Gale sang me a song of desperate, aching need, and eleven blades pierced Alrik’s chest from the back, piercing through his chest.

Somewhere in the Gossamyr, I saw a man made of sunlight shrug his shoulders in indifference at the loss of a minion.

A woman made of green light and sparks regarded me curiously, but she looked away with a frown.

The golden crystal of Arx Maxima healed another deep fracture, as it spun in the control room of the Spire, overlooking Monados.

In Solarias, Etienne dueled against four other students at the Academy with the silver flames of Mithras in his eyes. Somehow he met my eyes and scoffed at me.

In the Glade of the Evernight Rose, Amaranthine Sadow sat on her throne of roses and carved a strange heartwood into the shape of a familiar dragon.

In Subterra, a stone giant that made Granix look tiny peered through the mists and met my eyes. “We will speak soon,” the Stone King vowed.

Then the moment broke, like Alrik’s soul, and he died. With him went all of his minions, their vital essence had been drained, and resided within me now. I disengaged Galvanize to stem the tide of dark whispers from the Ebon Gale.

“Thanks for the help,” the unmistakably manly voice of Xian proclaimed when he landed in the arena again. “Wanna fight to see who gets to be the Obsidian Champion,” he demanded of Miyuki and I as he walked over to us.