“What are you doing?” Alyssa shouted as soon as she got over her shock of having the demon drop down right in front of her. It wasn’t much of a shock. As it turned out, having angels and mimics constantly pop up out of nothing had immunized her to most forms of suddenly appearing people. It helped that the demon wasn’t going to attack her. She could tell that much from how the demon hadn’t drop-kicked her on her way down from whatever panel of the broken glass dome she had launched herself from.
No. Alyssa wasn’t worried about the demon at the moment. Not even with her slightly more frightening visage. Now that she was up close and face to face with the demon, Alyssa couldn’t help but grimace. Before, her unmasked face had been normal. Human-normal. Lips. Ears. Nose. If Alyssa were to describe the demon’s mouth now, she would have to say it was more of a maw. Her nose was gone, replaced with little slits highlighted with those glowing red veins that covered her entire body. The ears had vanished as well, replaced with little spikes that matched the larger horns on the demons head. Watching the demon talk in that strange way she had to use to make her speech understandable through the effects of Accelero did not help matters.
It was… quite horrifying, actually.
But the real problem was getting back to its feet in the distance. Or… getting back to its wings? The Justice was getting up either way.
“What am I doing?” the demon said. Despite her strange mouth, the steam coming out with every word, and the slight hiss that accompanied the steam, the demon’s voice was strangely… seductive. And her pose had clearly been lifted from the cheapest rag of a dating tips magazine.
Alyssa hated every second of it.
“What am I doing?” the demon said again, pointing at herself as she shifted her hips. “What are you doing? Do you really have time to stand around and gawk?” As she spoke, she moved to poke Alyssa in the chest.
Alyssa took a step back, careful to avoid letting the demon touch her. If the demon actually tried, Accelero or not, she wouldn’t be able to avoid her. But, luckily, the demon was not trying. “I’m not gawking. I’m trying to get into position so that when we’re ready, we can try to take that thing out.” Her head snapped back and forth between the demon and the Justice, trying to keep both in her field of view at the same time.
Which revealed another problem.
The Justice stood fully upright. Both of its hands were clasped around the hilt of its sword.
It clearly intended to try attacking the demon again.
The demon that was right next to Alyssa.
“Could you go back up there and keep knocking it around?”
“I could. But—”
“But? Why is there a but!”
“It just seems like I’m not getting much out of this deal.”
“Deal? Deal!” Demon. Of course. It was something she really should have expected. People back on Earth had a phrase. If you’re good at something, never do it for free. And at the moment, the demon was the best at keeping that Justice down. “How’s this for a deal: You keep that thing face down in the mud and I’ll do my best to get rid of it?”
“Hmm… Doesn’t sound that enticing.”
“Enticing?” Alyssa’s head snapped to the Justice as it shifted. The sword was raised as high as it could be, preparing for a straight downward slash. The tip hit the dome’s ceiling, sending another wave of cracks through it. But the sudden stop seemed to give the Justice pause. A moment of confusion to get the demon to act.
“Having the Astral Authority off your back doesn’t sound enticing?”
“Tenebrael will get to that eventually. All I have to do is wait—and I am a very patient being. The Astral Authority won’t kill me before she gets around to it, even if they have managed to temporarily… undo my work on many of my fellow brethren.”
“They killed them?” Alyssa said, eyebrows raised. “The infected?” She really should concern herself more with the Justice and its impending sword. But she did have a few Annihilators up her sleeve and that had worked last time. If it didn’t work, she doubted that she would be able to run fast enough to get away from the shockwave. Especially not if the demon followed her, thus keeping Alyssa at the center of the Justice’s aim.
“Temporarily.” Despite the emphasis, Alyssa wasn’t sure that there was much conviction in the demon’s steam-filled voice.
“Well maybe you could temporarily go beat that thing down so we can keep haggling. You might be able to take a hit from it, but I can’t. If I die, you won’t be getting much out of this deal either way.”
The demon reached forward like she was about to brush Alyssa’s cheek. “I could bring you back.”
“No.” Alyssa jumped back to keep away from the demon’s hand, just about stumbling over one of Kasita’s clones in the process. “Absolutely not.”
“You might not have much choice in the matter,” the demon said, looking up to where the Justice had shifted positions to get the sword ready to swing. It wouldn’t be quite as big of an attack as when it had nearly leveled the ruins of Owlcroft, but that had honestly been overkill for everything but the demon.
“I’m pretty sure Tenebrael wants to eat me and Iosefael wants to… whatever normally happens to souls. You’re going to have some competition and, right now, the Justice is after you. You might want to bring your expectations of what you’re going to get out of this down a few notches before I decide to just take care of it all on my own.”
A blast of steam came out of the demon’s mouth. There might have been a burst of a laugh somewhere in there, but the hiss covered it up. “On your own?”
“That was the original plan,” Alyssa said, eyes never leaving the demon—thankfully she was standing between Alyssa and the Justice. That let her watch as the Justice refocused and angled its sword to swing in a wide sweep toward the ground, fully within the large dome. “Last chance to make a realistic demand.”
Steam leaked out from the corners of the demon’s maw. She didn’t say a word for a long moment, simply choosing to stare as she slowly tilted her head. “I think I’ll pass and… see how this plays out.”
“Damn it.”
“Aw, did I call your bluff? Need me after all?”
“Kasita!” Alyssa shouted, focusing all her attention on the Justice.
“Done with your—” “—one sided conversation? Good, because I’m starting to crowd myself out,” she said between freezing and popping up again.
And she was right. There were a good twenty Kasitas around. A few looked to be interacting with each other. Two were shaking each others’ hands. Another two were engaged in some kind of dance. Four were… posing? For…
It really wasn’t the time. Both for wondering at the mimic’s antics and for staring at them. Alyssa spared enough time to shoot a shrugging Kasita a dirty look.
“What? It was boring. And I might never—” “—have this opportunity again.”
“Is this going to interfere?”
“No.” Kasita said, smile disappearing. “I’m ready.”
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“Good. Because we’re out of time.”
Kasita reached into her own chest, withdrawing a single spell card. “Just give the word.”
The demon took a step back, crossing her arms as she watched. Alyssa tried to put the monster out of her mind as she watched the Justice. It was the real threat.
But it wasn’t swinging its sword. It looked like it was ready. There was nowhere else to move to get more of a swing on its sword. But it just wasn’t attacking.
Why? The Astral Authority were like computer programs, designed to carry out a specific task or two. It wouldn’t stop just because she was near its target. And it hadn’t before. Granted, she had been connected to Tenebrael at the time, but it certainly hadn’t cared for the safety of Kasita or Izsha. Alyssa glanced at the demon, wondering if it was watching and waiting for her to make a move before committing to an attack. Even for it, that sword had real mass that couldn’t simply be ignored. It did, after all, obey at least some of reality’s rules. From a standstill, the demon could easily jump and move out of the way as it had done before.
“Plan B it is.”
“Blue Flare,” Kasita said.
A blast of teal flames launched high into the air. High enough that, when Irulon came out from her dome to enact her part of the plan, she would be able to see it and know what Alyssa was trying to do.
“Should have agreed with me,” Alyssa said, offhandedly glancing at the demon.
The demon didn’t have any eyebrows to raise, but the change of her face might have been one eyebrow raising in amusement. One amused eyebrow up turned to two in surprise as three sets of Spectral Chains wrapped around her body. Arms pinned to her side and legs pulled together made even the demon a simple thing to knock off balance.
“Shame the Taker isn’t here to free you this time. You let him die like the rest of your minions?”
“Plan B is… suicide?” the demon asked, craning her head up to see. Despite falling into dirt and loose brush, her obsidian face was entirely clean. “Even if I couldn’t get out—”
Whatever the demon was going to say, she didn’t get a chance. The Justice obviously calculated that the odds of hitting its target were in its favor. Its entire form flickered and, along with that flicker, the sword flashed into motion.
Even with Accelero, Alyssa had less than a second to react.
Continuum Split. A combination of Irulon’s research into Fractal magic and her father’s Time magic. Apparently developed together, according to the briefing that Irulon had given her a few minutes ago.
Alyssa stood still, holding the chains that kept the demon from moving. At the same time, she started running. The blade of the Justice’s sword was frozen in the air only a football field away—far too close for her liking. She could see the wave of pressurized air that its sharp blade created as it failed to cleanly slice through like a heat haze around the entire thing.
Time was… effectively stopped. Again, not completely. Had she used the spell alone, she might have suspected that time was completely stopped. That was what Irulon claimed the spell would do, in any case. But with the Justice and how fast it was moving, with the demon and how she was slowly struggling, Alyssa could tell that there was still some movement. It wouldn’t last forever. In fact, relative to the caster, it was only supposed to last a few minutes at most before the spell would… snap, had been Irulon’s word. While she wasn’t sure what snap meant exactly, a few minutes should be more than enough.
She had a secondary card had Continuum Split not worked as advertised. Another Reality Sliver. But… looking at the sword that close, she wasn’t sure that she would have been able to get it off before that sword took her head off.
Or just turned her into a fine red mist, as was likely a far more plausible outcome of it coming anywhere near her.
Kasita, already a stone and back in her hand, was not shifting or leaving duplicates of herself anymore. Hopefully that meant that everything was alright. If it wasn’t, Kasita wouldn’t be harmed by physical attacks anyway. It might be hell to find her after everything, but she would be fine.
With time slowed to an even further degree, Alyssa managed to run and hop, using Shorten Distance, a fair way. She didn’t run away from the Justice. Rather, toward it. She slipped directly underneath the sword, glad its pressure wave didn’t act like a solid wall, and kept running. Behind her, she erected a series of walls. Not physical walls, but a different version of Reality Sliver. The same version that Irulon had used to block off the entrances to the church basement at the Juno Federation Outpost. Irulon had suggested that they might be used as an emergency shield against debris when a full dome would be impractical or unnecessary.
Alyssa was hoping that they would act as a wind break. And a debris shield. And… an anything shield, really.
The ground disappearing out from under her was another concern. When that sword hit, shit would hit the fan. A sliver of glass underneath her would help, but she would have to be careful. If she dismissed it and there wasn’t anything underneath, she might end up falling to her death. So many ways to die, so little time.
Irulon had created a bridge of Fractal magic to get over the swamp on their way out of Illuna. Being a highly ranked spell that Alyssa hadn’t ever cast before, she hadn’t wanted to test any strange side effects when using it.
Instead, she started laying out long stretches of the slivers directly underneath her. The Justice was still over the large crater, now hovering rather than kneeling or being beaten down. Her boots gave her enough traction, but it was a good thing that it hadn’t been raining. The mirrored surface was smooth as the glass it resembled. They created something of a bridge over the crater.
Skidding to a stop directly underneath the Justice, Alyssa built up several more walls of the impenetrable Reality Slivers. She terraced them on top of each other, leaving not even the slightest crack save for a small hole the size of her arm directly overhead. The hole wound up covered up as well. She wasn’t sure how the air pressure from the Justice’s attack would act if it wasn’t sealed.
The second there were no holes, Alyssa chose the split she wanted. The version of herself that had done nothing aside from stand still, holding onto Spectral Chains, vanished from existence. There wasn’t any disorientation. Just a sudden feeling that she was once again alone.
Thunder crashed against her small chamber at the same time. Air flew about her head, throwing her hair around. There were a few cracks in her perfect construction. It felt like a hurricane physically slapping her face, but it wasn’t slicing her apart the way a stream of pressurized water might have done.
Kasita popped up, only to be thrown back against one of the mirrored surfaces before she had a chance to get a single word out. Her form froze a second later. No duplicate popped up until after the rush of wind died down.
Alyssa dismissed the topmost sliver the second she felt safe in doing so, though she kept herself ready to dive to the sides of her small chamber should there be any debris overhead.
But there wasn’t. The Justice stood overhead, legs bent slightly as it hovered a few dozen feet up.
The sky—what little of it existed beneath the larger dome—was filled with debris. Dirt, rocks, trees. The usual. But in the area around the Justice, everything was perfectly clear. As if it was warding it all away with its presence alone.
That worked for Alyssa.
“I see it holding the scales in its hand,” Alyssa said. “But both hands are holding the sword.”
So far, it hadn’t tried lifting the sword back up for a second attack. It simply stared somewhere out of Alyssa’s line of sight. Presumably the demon… or whatever was left of it. Though if the demon was dead, Alyssa would have expected it to retreat back to wherever it came from.
Just can’t catch a break, can I?
“We’re going to run out of space if this goes on for too long,” Kasita said, popping up and already glancing at two frozen clones of hers.
“All the more reason to answer my question quickly.”
That particular instance of Kasita did not answer. A new one popped up on the other side of Alyssa. “I see it around the left shoulder right now, but it changes any time the Justice makes a large move. Not waiting for Irulon’s signal?”
“It is still at the moment. Might not get another chance.”
A third instance of Kasita popped up, spell card already in hand and aimed at the gap in the slivers. “Violet Flare.”
“Violet?” Alyssa said as the purple ball of fire flew off, well away from the Justice. “What’s—”
“Now!” Kasita shouted. “Hit it now if you’re going to hit it! Quick, before—”
Gritting her teeth, Alyssa held her hand out the hole in the top of her protective shield. Annihilator card in hand, she adjusted slightly to try to get the Justice’s full left side in the blast.
The blindingly brilliant beam of her Annihilator blocked out all sight outside the shield. The mirrored surface inside the shield didn’t help. She pinched her eyes closed as hard as she could and it still felt like staring into the sun. But at least there wasn’t a giant laser beam incinerating her.
~Alyssa. If you do not wish to die, you need to use a full Reality Sliver in under twenty seconds from when I say now. Do not leave its safety for at least one half hour outside the effects of Accelero. Get ready… now!~
She had been planning on holding the Annihilator active as long as possible. Now…
Irulon’s timer was going. Unlike Alyssa at the best of times, Irulon counted time accurately in her head. She couldn’t delay for an answer from Kasita.
“Ugh!”
The Annihilator beam collapsed as Alyssa clenched her fist. With the heat gone from her face, Alyssa squinted.
The Justice was injured. One wing was missing entirely. The rest were in flames. Its entire backside looked like someone had tied its legs to a truck and dragged it over some bumpy country roads for a few miles. There wasn’t any actual blood—just gaps into the core of light that filled its being—but it was injured. Which was more than Alyssa had managed to do with several Annihilators back at Owlcroft. She had been aiming for the sword at the time, but the point still stood.
Looking around as Alyssa grasped for a Reality Sliver card, Alyssa couldn’t find the scales anywhere on the Justice. There were metal chains and a drooping bar, but no actual scales.
Only as the mirrored dome started forming up around her reflective shelter did Alyssa realize that the Justice was not floating anymore.
It was falling.
Just before the spell finished, the Justice must have hit the outside. Cracks ran across the shell. The solid panes of mirrored glass changed, every single one showing off the prismatic city of towers and angels.
The Endless Expanse.