by Eric Vall
“Power,” Sera repeated, and her voice grew musing. “Yes, I suppose that’s what I find attractive about you. So much potential, so much buried strength you can’t even see. You are the only human in this world worthy of my attention.”
She shivered, and her pupils dilated with curious lust as she leaned toward me across the back of the snapdarner.
“Sera …” I warned, but it paled in the face of that alluring expression.
“You might be the only man who could overpower me,” she purred.
Come on and fight, Phi snarled from the ground where her giant form loomed. Or are you too afraid of being destroyed by my final monster?
“She has only two?” Sera wondered out loud. “All Archons can easily keep at least three monster essences within their souls on this plane without too much strain, though the Shadowscape allows us to summon even more. What happened to her third one?”
“Oh,” I realized suddenly, “I think I stole it. She sent her vingehund out to fight me earlier this year, and I captured it in an essence crystal.”
“You stole your vingehund from her?” Sera asked with a surprised blink. “I suppose that explains where you got such a rare monster.”
That’s it, Phi growled, no more waiting around.
Phi snapped her fingers, and a small, glowing creature appeared in the palm of her open hand. It was tiny, and I couldn’t see a thing beyond the blue aura that surrounded it.
“What’s that?” I asked in confusion.
“Ripper vole,” Sera breathed, and her eyes widened in shock. “Can she really use it and live?”
“What’s it do?” I questioned. “It doesn’t look like much.”
“Similar to your speed slugs,” Sera explained grimly, “it enhances the Archon who uses it. It comes at a cost, though, and I never considered Phi could sustain the effects …”
Quick as a shot, the ripper vole scampered up Phi’s arm and settled at the back of her neck where it disappeared under the Archon’s snow-white hair. The blue-skinned Archon flinched briefly, and I imagined the ripper vole attaching to her with sharp, rodent teeth.
Yes, yes! Phi bellowed as she stretched out her arms. Face me now, and die!
Her white wings spread out at her sides, and Phi’s blue aura suddenly swirled with shocks of blood-red that overtook her natural color and turned it muddy and vile in appearance. Meanwhile, Phi’s blue skin underwent a similar change, and it darkened to a sickly shade of indigo-gray that reminded me of rotting flowers. Two scarlet, bony horns burst from the Archon’s forehead, and her muscles rippled into bulging, unnatural sizes. She smiled, and I noticed every one of her teeth had lengthened into pointed, curving fangs.
Behold, Phi gloated, and the telepathic power of her words seared into my brain like a scalding iron. Your destruction awaits.
She laughed in a hoarse, bloodcurdling voice, and I flinched as the sound of it washed over me.
“How bad is this?” I asked Sera as dread settled in the pit of my stomach.
“This is the worst case scenario,” Sera responded, and worry colored her voice for the first time. “My leviathan is strong, but it’s not precisely meant for fighting out of the water. The ripper vole’s effects are powerful, though they are slightly different for every Archon. It’s impossible to say if Phi can wield it properly, but if she can, we’re in trouble.”
Phi charged Sera’s leviathan, and her hands met its larger tentacles halfway. They struggled for a moment, and then Phi dipped her head to slash a long wound along the leviathan’s upper body.
Sera hissed and recalled her leviathan with a hand gesture.
“Aren’t you worried about the mana it will take to send it out again?” I asked with concern.
“It’s different for the monsters Archons summon,” Sera explained distractedly. “In the human realm, it doesn’t take me any mana to summon them, but my monsters don’t heal instantly like yours would. It might be days before my bre’gura regrows its tusk.”
I marveled at Sera’s easy admission of such important information, but I shook off my awe as my mind raced over possibilities for how to handle this situation. We had a difficult fight ahead of us, for certain.
“Right,” I decided, “time to bring out the support team.”
I snagged four essence crystals from the lower end of my bandolier, and I tossed them out as one big group. I watched as they dropped out of sight toward the distant ground below. Then I snagged nine crystals from my pouch with a bit of searching, and one by one I threw those out as well.
“What are you doing?” Sera asked in bafflement.
“Building your leviathan an ocean,” I explained with a grunt of exertion as I directed thirteen monsters at once.
I barely had any mana left, and sweat beaded on my brow as I used even these minor monsters. Resummoning anything large would likely knock me out instantly, if I tried it.
My first four monsters, the drillmoles, quickly burrowed into the ground far below, and I watched the ground churn as they rocketed through dirt and stone to loosen it one layer at a time. As soon as they started, my other nine, fishlike creatures got to work.
Truly, I was impressed by the two-legged fish I had picked up in the craus’lar. I’d doubted the actual applicability of my plan, but the fish spread out in a line on their weak, land-capable legs, and water gushed from each one by the gallon as it flowed without fail into the churned earth. Loosened dirt quickly turned to mud, and soon the entire clearing was morphing into sloppy, unstable ground.
Ridiculous, Phi mocked as she stepped back from the growing sludge of mud and water in the clearing. Are you going to filth me to death? Let me show you what a real attack looks like.
Phi snapped her wings open, and muscles bulged in her torso and shoulders as she launched herself from the ground.
Then the Archon flew straight for us, and my heart clenched as her fingers stretched out to grasp our snapdarner.
At the last moment, Sera’s flying monster dropped downward, and we swooped under the enhanced Archon’s massive wing feathers in the nick of time. The snapdarner darted away to the other side of the clearing, and I watched as Phi receded to a safe distance.
“We don’t have much time,” I said quickly, “so you have to listen to me now, if you want to win.”
“I’m listening,” Sera responded skeptically as her yellow gaze flickered over to me.
“I want you to follow this plan,” I proposed, and I explained to Sera exactly what I had in mind for Phi.
“Fine,” Sera agreed as her eyes narrowed speculatively at me. “We’ll do it your way, but I decide how it ends. I want to make her suffer for what she did to me, you understand?”
“If you kill Phi,” I warned, “she’s only going to come back eventually. Because of the Archon capacity for resurrection, we have to capture her.”
“And just how do you plan on doing that?” Sera asked as her brow lowered in consternation.
“Simple,” I explained as I patted my pouch of empty essence crystals. “I’ll catch her like any other monster.”
“She’ll need to be barely clinging to life if you hope to catch her,” Sera hissed, “and even then, no ordinary crystal can hope to properly contain her forever. I’m killing her. You’ll have to accept disappointment.”
“We’ll see about that,” I warned as I flicked my eyes over to examine Phi. “I’m not just going to kick the can down the road and leave this problem for the generation after me, when she comes back to full strength.”
Then I set my plan into motion.
Phi charged back at us with her wings outstretched to leap into the air, but the snapdarner dropped back down to hover a mere thirty feet off the ground, and Phi folded her wings in response to our lower height. She followed us straight across the field and through the muddy section, which was now closer to becoming a shallow lake as my monsters did their work.
You can’t run forever, Phi taunted as she sprinted through the water on enhanced legs.
“Now!” I shouted, and Sera snapped her fingers twice.
Her leviathan reappeared, and it dipped quickly beneath the rippling, splashing water to disappear in the murky lake. Phi stopped and twisted around to try to spot the monster, but she spun aimlessly without ever catching a glimpse.
The second monster Sera summoned was her bre’gura again, and the boar-like creature stood at the shoreline of the lake for a moment before it began to run in a ring around the perimeter of the water. The bre’gura was stunningly fast, and it left a tarry, black mess in its hoofprint trail that began to seep and mix with the water at the lake’s edge.
Suddenly, the leviathan lunged from the water, and the lake surged around it as its behemoth form shot upward with devastating power. Its larger tentacles clung to Phi’s wrists and ankles, and it heaved itself upward to dig its beaklike mouth directly into her stomach.
The white-eyed Archon howled in pain, and she thrust out at the leviathan with wild, muscled blows.
Phi ripped two tentacles off entirely, and they fell into the muck below as the leviathan fought the white-eyed Archon. Phi’s next blow cracked against the monster’s serpentine body as her fist broke a few rib bones.
Sera ordered her leviathan off the attack, and it slunk beneath the murky water once more before it swam away from its victim.
Now freed, Phi stumbled away from the water and ran back onto the dry dirt at the edge of the lake. Unlike her wounds from before, the deep gash of her stomach wound began to seal and heal up as blood bubbled hotly from the cut.
“Regeneration,” Sera spat. “We’ll have to drain all her mana, or we could just take her out in one go.”
“Mana takes too long,” I decided, “so we’ll take her out in one go.”
“So we will,” Sera agreed with a dangerous glint to her yellow eyes.
The water stirred as the leviathan pinpointed Phi at the water’s edge, and ripples flowed in its wake as it approached speedily.
Phi spotted the telltale signs of the oncoming leviathan, and the white-eyed Archon tried to rush away. When she moved her legs, her bare feet stuck and sank into the black, tarry hoofprints of the bre’gura. Phi frowned and beat her wings to lift free of the tar, but her feet remained entombed. She was trapped completely, and her movements grew erratic as she twisted, pushed, and dragged to try and free her feet.
Then the leviathan rose from the water’s edge, and Phi tumbled to her knees as she tried and failed to loosen her feet enough to pull free.
Let’s see how your pathetic trap fares against real power, Phi snapped with fresh confidence as she stopped pulling away.
The tips of her scarlet horns glinted and glowed as power formed between them in a gathering ball of red and blue magic. The leviathan lunged, and Phi’s power ball shot forth in a beam that seared its gray hide with magic so powerful it burned the leviathan’s skin in ripples of blue and red fire, and lava-like liquid dripped to the water below. The leviathan thrashed in pain as it tried to duck and weave around the beam of energy, but Phi kept up her onslaught with careful precision, and it was beginning to do serious damage.
“I have to retreat,” Sera insisted as she began to order her leviathan away.
“No,” I insisted as I scanned the ground below, “order it forward at all costs. One decisive sprint is all we need.”
Sera gave me a skeptical glance, but she obeyed, and her leviathan surged toward the white-eyed Archon in one aggressive movement as it embraced the assault of the power-beam.
Lava dribbled down from the point of attack, and the hot liquid landed directly on the pool of tar Phi knelt in.
In an instant, the giant Archon caught aflame in a blaze so hot, I had to squint and look away.
Phi shrieked as the burn scalded through flesh and tissue with blistering force, and she beat her wings reflexively to try and pull free of the situation. Her feathered wings fanned the flames, and the inferno roared up around the Archon stronger than ever.
Phi realized her mistake quickly, and she dropped to her stomach to smother the flames with her body. The golden chains around her torso rattled as they ground along the dirt and tar, and Phi’s shrieks subsided into cursing and growling as the inferno devoured her.
“Not so fun a game when you’re not winning,” I retorted privately to myself, “is it?”
The bre’gura pounded around the edge of the lake as it returned, and its ebony tusks flashed dangerously in the sun as it charged straight for Phi’s prone form.
The white-eyed Archon heaved herself up from the charred remains of the burnt tar just in time to receive two bre-gura tusks directly to her lower back.
Phi arched and flailed as the tusks gored into her abdomen, and blood flowed like water down the small of her back. The broken tusk had left a jagged, wide cut straight through the surface of her flesh, and I imagined it hurt even more than the deep puncture wound of the other, intact tusk.
You’re all cheaters, Phi bellowed as she twisted around to grab the bre’gura by its tusks just as before. She never got the chance to do any damage, though, since the leviathan was waiting right behind her.
The watery serpent lunged free of the lake, and water splashed behind it as it sank its beaklike mouth directly around Phi’s left shoulder.
Bre’gura and leviathan both slashed, stabbed, and tore at the Archon as she sought to fight them off, but she was already thoroughly weakened from the extensive burns as well as the eye injury and other wounds she’d suffered earlier at the hands of me and my friends. Phi collapsed, and her fragile attempts to defend herself weakened until she simply curled up and lay in the mud.
I recalled my fish and drillmoles, and I sagged with relief as the drain on my last dregs of mana ceased.
“Now for some real payback,” Sera gloated, and her snapdarner zipped down to meet Phi on the ground.
The flying monster’s six insectoid legs clung to the ground beneath it, and Sera hopped off before she walked toward Phi in menacing, slow steps.
As she walked, her form grew rapidly, and I stared as Sera reached an enormous, fifty-foot height to match Phi’s. Sera stepped forward, and the expanse of her pale skin nearly glowed as the sunlight reflected off it.
The leviathan and the bre’gura parted just as Sera reached her target, and the dark Archon planted one bare foot directly on Phi’s stomach with crushing pressure.
Phi gasped and sputtered as pain from her burns and cuts were amplified by Sera’s simple, unrelenting press. Phi began to curse and cry out anew, but Sera only tilted her head with predator-like curiosity as she watched her younger sister suffer.
If you had been in my place, Phi ground out through her gasps and pants, you would have done the same thing.
“I would have,” Sera agreed easily, “but the difference is, I would not be lying on the ground like you are now. Many Archons sided against me, but only you were foolish enough to do it and never anticipate my return.”
Sera delivered a kick to Phi’s ribs, and a smile spread over her beautiful face. She kicked again, then again, and she knelt to add in a few well-placed punches and head-slams.
Phi’s wounds continued to heal slowly from the influence of the ripper vole, but Sera was content to inflict as much suffering as possible while she had the opportunity. It was clear Phi couldn’t keep up with her regeneration for long.
I hurried over at a jog while I rifled through my pack for an empty essence crystal. I had no idea if it would really work or not, but I wasn’t about to abandon this task for the young mages who would one day take my place. Phi was too big of a threat to simply delay, and I only knew of one method to truly put a stop to her.
As I neared, Sera reached down and tore the ripper vole straight off Phi’s neck. Her giant, pale hand crushed the little monster in her grip, and blue and red aura sizzled off the rodent’s body in droves before she dropped the ripper vole to the earth below.
Phi’s scarlet horns shriveled and broke off, and her skin slowly faded bac
k to plain blue even as her aura cleared of red streaking. Her powerful muscles shrank, and Phi collapsed weakly into the dirt below as her last remaining shred of strength was leached away.
Now that Phi’s regeneration was stopped, Sera switched from blunt strikes to cutting attacks. She drew her sharp, deadly nails across Phi’s skin in quick blows that flayed open flesh and exposed lower layers of muscle tissue with every stroke.
“This is for conspiring against me,” Sera snarled as she sliced open a cut on Phi’s cheek, “and this is for the dark cave in which you left me.”
Another terrible slice opened up across Phi’s neck, and blood welled up as the white-eyed Archon choked out a pained cry.
“Here’s for the silence, and the pain, and the boredom,” Sera growled as she cut more strokes into Phi’s arms. “This is for your sheer arrogance, that you thought I wouldn’t beat you this time.”
Sera plunged her fingernails deep into Phi’s chest, and the blue-skinned Archon choked out a breathless gasp as her left lung was punctured.
This was my chance, I realized as I watched the life begin to drain from Phi’s body from a hundred different cuts.
I sprinted in with my rhin dagger and my crystal clutched in each of my hands, and I shot past Sera just as she began to realize what I was about to do.
“Stop!” Sera shouted in desperation while I plunged my dagger straight into Phi’s quivering shoulder.
My rhin dagger hit bone, and I wrenched it free with a sickening squelch as blood welled from the new wound.
“This is for Njordenfalls!” I shouted as I positioned the empty essence crystal above the dagger wound.
Sera cursed, and the dark Archon reached for me even as I raised the crystal and slammed it home. Blood welled up as I drove it deep, deep inside Phi’s giving flesh, and the crystal heated as a bond suddenly sparked to life inside me.
The world spun around me as I felt the crystal take, and the bond snapped fully into place between Phi and myself as she dissolved beneath my bloody hands and was sucked into the empty crystal.
A sickening feeling lurched through my entire body and mind as I felt the connection between master and monster form and strengthen between Phi and me. The blue-skinned Archon’s rage was palpable, but she could do nothing as the essence crystal worked against her.
