Mott scuttled aside, smashing apart two more
support columns and causing the heavy stones of the roof to begin
to rain down. The already damaged roof was now well and truly
collapsing, albeit gradually. By the time Mott had shrugged off the
falling stones and spotted Ether again to snap at her, she was upon
Turiel. The sorceress was ready, conjuring a thicket of black
threads. Ether flitted aside but several of the threads slashed
through her being, sending an entirely new surge of pain through
her.
Rather than retreat again, Ether pressed on,
stoking her flames hotter. The mystic fire burned through the black
tendrils, but Turiel conjured more to replace them, hurling some of
them forward at Ether and weaving the others into a protective mesh
to deflect the falling stones and the slashing fingers of the
elemental.
The pain was intense, but it was nothing
Ether hadn’t learned to deal with in her dozens of encounters with
the D’Karon. And though she could feel the gems chip away at her
strength with each glancing blow from Mott’s teeth and tail once
the creature was in a position to strike, it was doing little to
threaten the vast reserves of magic she’d accumulated in the period
of relative peace since the end of the war. It wasn’t until most of
the roof had fallen away, ending the rocky cascade that had been
pummeling Mott, that the hulking creature could once again direct
his full attention to Ether. His jaws yawned wide and snapped shut
around her, driving gem-studded, arm-length teeth through Ether’s
insubstantial form.
His attack didn’t last long before Ether’s
intensity incinerated the teeth, but it was enough to convince her
she would have to abandon her flaming form lest she make the
mistake of overexerting herself as she had so many times before.
When Mott recoiled, howling in pain again and clawing at his ashen
and smoldering teeth with two of his legs, Ether shifted to wind
and slipped around and between the weave of black magic that had
held her at bay.
When she coalesced again, her form a tangible
mass of tightly whirling wind, she took up nearly all of the
available space within Turiel’s protective net. The sorceress spun
to face her, but Ether struck first, drawing the air from the
woman’s lungs and conjuring a wind that forced her back against the
net that was to have protected her.
“Listen to me,” Ether said, her voice issuing
from the core of her windy shape. “You may have heard the legends
of this world, the stories you humans tell of great heroes. Many
such figures of your history are renowned for their mercy.
I am
not
. I have no use for mercy, and you have done nothing to
deserve it. You should use what little time you have left to give
thanks that I do not have the time to make you suffer properly for
the evils you have wrought.”
Turiel, still struggling to draw a breath,
dispelled her own protection. The threads vanished like wisps of
smoke, leaving the wind that had pinned her to them to send her
hurtling backward. She was dashed twice against the mounds of
fallen stone before Mott’s coiled tail snatched her from the air
and lowered her carefully to the ground. He then struck with the
tip of his tail, driving it like a scorpion’s stinger into the
whirling form of the shapeshifter. Ether effortlessly scattered to
avoid the attack, which instead pulverized the stone of the wall
that had been spared the collapse thus far thanks to Turiel’s
efforts. It began to tumble down, threatening to crush Ivy’s prone
form, but Ether drew together again and tightened her focus around
the stones. Bringing them to a halt through wind alone took enough
of her dedicated strength that Turiel finally managed to wrestle a
breath into her lungs.
“Mott!” she croaked. “You’ll injure Ivy!”
The creature released a yelp of concern and
dismay, then skittered back to avoid causing any greater collapse
and further endanger the sleeping malthrope. As the walls all
around them shuddered and collapsed to expose them to the roaring
winds and churning sea, Ether drifted between the monster and Ivy.
She pulled herself together into her stone form and dropped heavily
to the ground.
Rather than waste her time on further threats
or conversation, Ether simply thundered toward monster and master
alike, crushing stone to powder beneath her rocky feet. Mott
snapped at her with his already damaged mouth, but just as he was
faster than seemed possible for his size, so too was Ether far more
nimble than a stone construction ought to be. She sidestepped,
allowing the monster’s head to punch through the weakened floor,
then delivered a punishing blow to the back of its head.
Reeling, he pulled himself from the damaged
floor and tried to snap at where she had been, but Ether had clawed
her way onto his neck and was hammering and slashing relentlessly
at the tough shell. The wounds she opened offered little more than
a faint glow, not a drop of blood.
Turiel filled the air with more of her black
tendrils. Where they struck Ether, they bored into her surface like
roots splitting stone over the seasons. Where they struck Mott,
they mended his wounds and strengthened his armor. Mott managed to
whip his tail upward and coil it around Ether, tearing her from his
neck and constricting her form. The lines of gemstone studs ground
into her rocky skin, but unlike against her other forms, the gems
did little good against this one. The constriction, however, was
beginning to wear on her, causing cracks to feather through her
limbs. Thus immobilized, the sorceress had little difficulty
perforating and cocooning her with filaments of dark magic.
A low, indulgent churr of fiendish glee
rumbled through Mott, and for a moment Turiel allowed a grin to
flash across her face as she felt the colossal power of her foe
begin to flicker and wane. Between the monstrous tail and layers of
filament, no part of Ether was visible anymore. A subtle, grating
crumble rang out, and both tail and cocoon began to collapse
inward. Then came a hiss and a brilliant flash as Ether shifted
back to flame with a fierce cry.
The heat was phenomenal, even compared to
what she’d displayed earlier in the battle. Her formerly pinned
arms sliced effortlessly through the tail’s tough hide, causing the
huge limb to fall away in writhing loops. The threads binding her
crackled to nothingness, and before Turiel could conjure more,
Ether was upon her. The blazing elemental swiped her brilliant
flaming hand down upon the wrist of the sorceress’s staff-bearing
hand. Like the armor, the flesh and bone offered little
resistance.
So fast was the attack, and so thoroughly did
it sear Turiel’s arm, that the sorceress didn’t make a sound. She
merely stumbled backward and fell, cradling the wound while her
staff clattered to the ground.
The result was immediate. With the staff no
longer actually in her grasp, its amplifying effect on her focus
vanished. This left her without the level of control required to
keep Mott’s massive form intact. Plates of armor began to peel away
as he roared and writhed, falling to pieces. In the space of a few
seconds, the behemoth was reduced to a motionless husk, no longer
recognizable as what it once was.
Ether let her fiery form fade, though the
anger within her was not diminished in the slightest. Steadily she
allowed her flaming substance to be replaced with flesh and blood.
For reasons she could not fully explain, she felt the need to see
this horrid creature with human eyes, and to face her as something
she would perceive as one of her own. Thoughts and concerns, things
left undone, teased and prodded at her mind. She ignored them. The
need to see this woman, and to see her suffer, was far too
important now.
Once she was fully human, dressed in a
billowing white robe and with her disgust and anger clear upon her
face, Ether stalked over to where Turiel had fallen.
“You,” Turiel began, breathlessly, “are
precisely the monster I imagined you to be.”
“I cannot say the same of you.” She kicked
the staff aside, the sorceress’s severed hand still gripping it.
“No creature, living or dead, has committed so heinous a crime as
you. Yet somehow you seem to be nothing more than a human seduced
by D’Karon teachings. It brings me no pleasure to kill you. It is
merely a task that must be done.”
“Tell me… what will happen to the child? To
Ivy? She is of the D’Karon as well.”
“It is true that she is touched by their
evil, but at least she has turned herself from them. She has fought
for this world, abandoned her masters. She is redeemed.”
“So she will be spared?”
“She will.”
Turiel’s expression became less pained. She
seemed almost serene, ready to accept what was to come.
“All is well then. She has much promise…”
“Ether…” called Ivy weakly, her mind finally
beginning to recover.
“Rest, Ivy. I will see to you when this
blight is wiped away.”
“You… you can’t…” Ivy said, trying to stand.
“She… she knows something…”
“There is
nothing
this
thing
could know that would make her worthy of being spared.”
“You have to… if you don’t…”
Ether’s fingers began to take on the
brilliant glow of flame again, and she leaned down to the
sorceress. Turiel seemed ready for her punishment. Behind her,
something seemed wrong, however. The crackle of settling shell and
armor had become sharper for a moment. Now a tapping sound was just
barely audible over the howling wind and crashing waves.
She turned to find that Mott, his flesh raw
and bruised and three of his eight legs badly broken, had dragged
himself out of the wreckage of his former self. The massive form
must have been little more than a suit built over him. He had made
his way to Ivy and was nuzzling her. His face was forlorn, his
movements sluggish. Ivy was lying back against what remained of one
wall. She rested a hand on Mott’s head.
“You get away from her…” Ether hissed,
turning and stepping quickly toward Ivy, mindful of what Mott might
do. Even in his reduced form, he was still more than capable of
tearing out a throat, and Ether would not allow these things to
take her ally from her. The world had lost too many Chosen
already.
“Ether… I don’t know if… I don’t think that…”
Ivy muttered, nearly delirious.
“Be still,” Ether said.
She reached down and grasped Mott by the
wings with her still-flesh hand. He did nothing to resist, only
slacking his neck to try to keep it near Ivy for as long as he
could. When that was no longer possible, he turned his head weakly
to Ether and gazed at her pathetically.
Ether moved her hand closer, ready to run her
blazing fingers through his head and end his misery. A moment
before she could do so, however, his gaze sharpened and he pulled
his head away. Then, amid a crackle and peel, the wings Ether held
came free and Mott fell to the ground, scuttling with purpose
toward where Turiel had fallen.
The shapeshifter slashed with her fiery hand,
sending a lance of flame outward that splashed against the
mismatched creature, but Mott merely squealed in pain and continued
his escape. Ether glanced up and instantly understood. Turiel had
dragged herself to the staff. Once it was in her hand again, she
was able to invigorate Mott.
Furious both at the job left undone and her
foolish oversight of the staff, Ether burst fully to flame and
streaked through the air, but Turiel and Mott had slipped through a
wide fault in a wall and reached the edge of the steep cliff that
made up the walls of the island. With a final shove, Turiel slid
off the face of the cliff. Ether had already inexcusably
underestimated the woman once. She would not leave the fall and the
churning sea to finish the job she’d failed to finish herself. She
swept over the edge and down toward the plummeting woman. Ahead,
directly below her, a ring of roiling black energy encircled a
window depicting some piles of rubble and a floor of damaged stone.
Turiel and Mott plummeted through. Before Ether could follow, the
necromancer willed the portal shut.
Ether braced herself as an explosion of
energy splashed against her, forcing her fiery form back and taking
a massive bite out of the cliff side. It was painful, but she was
able to endure the blast without any lingering ill effect.
Nevertheless, the damage was done. Her own blindness and oversight
had allowed that
thing
to slip from her fingers once more.
It burned her, shamed her. More than anything, it worried her. This
affliction of her mind had caused her focus to suffer, that much
she was certain of. Such had robbed her of the clarity of thought
that would have made tracking this sorceress to the ends of the
earth as effortless as it would have been in the past. But this was
not a matter of focus, or at least not a matter of
mystic
focus. This was a matter of judgment. If her feelings were clouding
her
thinking
as well as her concentration, then what could
be trusted? How could she fulfill her task?
She whisked back to the surface and touched
down, shifting to humanity once more and moving quickly to Ivy’s
side.
“Did you… is she…” Ivy muttered. Her voice
was less slurred, but she still clearly had to work at even forming
the words. Her mind was not as it should be.
“She and her pet escaped.”
“I think… I think that’s best,” Ivy said. “I
don’t know if… I don’t know if I know what I need to know.”
Ether leaned low and took Ivy’s hands,
hauling her to her feet and supporting her. “You are not well. Your
mind is weaker than usual. And I cannot remember a time when your
spirit has been so drained.”
“She did something,” Ivy said, her eyes
beginning to clear and her words becoming steadier. “I told her I
needed to know where the keyhole was, and I promised to help her if
she would tell me. She touched my head. It felt like…” she
shuddered, “like what
Epidime
would do when they were trying
to teach me. I think she was trying to show me where the keyhole
was, but I don’t… it’s all a jumble in my mind. Can you track her?
Follow her?”