Subtlest Game

Chapter 7: Puppet Strings

Blue fire flashed over the battlefield, ripping through armour and rotten flesh, and Akui lowered her hands. She flexed her fingers, feeling heat flow through them, then ducked. A golden sword swung over her head, snagging the ends of her cerulean hair. She allowed a slight smirk to twitch her lips, then thrust a hand forwards. For a moment the attacking pigman stared at her blankly as she pressed her palm against his cheek. Then he gave a single grunting shriek of pain as turquoise flames licked hungrily from her tan skin and bit into his skull.

Akui watched him drop to the ground, smoking, and turned away before she even felt his soul depart. Around her, the Freedom Fighters were finishing off the last remnants of the Imperial outpost, ensuring not a single one got away. Capture or kill, said their orders, but they couldn't afford to let the Empire know their exact actions - mysterious loss of forces would stoke fear and uncertainty in their ranks far more effectively than knowing exactly what they were dealing with.

Akui sighed. She didn't like this, lurking in the shadows and taking out the smallest, weakest outposts, but after they'd failed to defend the piglin kingdom and its new child king Hamlett, they'd had little choice to withdraw into the darkness of the basalt deltas and soulsand valleys, out of sight of the Emperor's burning gaze, from where they struck quickly and decisively, taking out what they could to upset the Empire's supply and scouting lines. And as Urgrakk said, these outposts still represented a very major knot in the web that spread the Empire's influence from the capital to the edges of the outer reaches.

"We're clear. The outpost is ours." Akui glanced up to see the second in command of her unit, Amarta, approaching her. She was a golden eyed woman, her skin paler than Akui's own brown tone, almost the colour of cream, an unusual sight in the Nether. With that and her long, scaly tail that whipped around behind her, signifying no species anyone in the Fighters had ever heard of, Akui suspected that she came from far further beyond the outer reaches than anyone else she'd met. Nevertheless, despite her murky background, she was a powerful pyromancer, and an indispensable aid in controlling the rowdy group of warriors that made up their unit.

"Tell the others to rest." she replied, giving Amarta a smile. A few weeks ago she'd have demanded to check herself, but she'd come to trust Amarta with such matters.

"Understood." Amarta responded, giving a smile herself.

"Come and sit with me after? We haven't talked in a while." Akui allowed a purr to slip into her voice, watching Amarta's face closely, but was disappointed to see no blush.

"If you like, Akui." Amarta turned and strode off towards the rest of their unit, tail flicking behind her. Akui smiled to herself. She wasn't especially interested in Amarta, not in that way, but she enjoyed the flirtation - part of the reason she wore little more than her fireproof crop top and miniskirt - and the pyromancer was clearly as at ease with it as she was.

Taking a seat on a nearby ledge, Akui let her legs dangle in the fumes of the lava lake, and gazed out over the Nether. Overworlders might have called the expanse of red rock and orange lava bland, too constant and simple, but it ignited a quiet love in Akui's flaming heart. She was a being of fire, and she thought that the flames of the Nether, orange and yellow and every shade in between, were a kind of pure beauty no plant or lump of dirt could match.

"How sweet...love for your home is always adorable."

Akui turned just in time to receive a fireball to the chest. It exploded across her torso, splashing flames over her mostly bared skin; it did no harm, with her heritage as a half-blazekin, but the force sent her flying backwards over the cliff, plunging down towards the lava lake.

Rage at being taken so off guard eclipsed Akui's thoughts and burst from her back in wings of blue fire. She spread them, catching the heat of the lava, and soared upwards, fire flaring from her hands. It engulfed the clifftop, and the figure standing there, in turquoise flames. She landed with a growl, heat burning behind her eyes, the need to kill whoever had dared attack her. Then she shook her head, forcing the anger out, knowing it would most likely just get her killed.

"How fascinating...self control from a pyromancer." murmured a voice, male, yet soft, intimate even. It spoke of quiet and darkness.

"You survived a fireball...so something tells me you're one too." growled Akui, sparks still dancing round her fingers.

Her adversary gave her a smile, an off puttingly warm and genuine one. He was a tall man, skin as milk chocolate dark as her own, thigh length hair a lavender pink that contrasted his dark blue eyes. His face was handsome - off-puttingly so, well defined and sculpted, but soft and warm. Dark pink horns protruded from his hair, like those of a Netherkin – common enough – but oddly, these were accompanied by leathery, bat-like wings of the same colour, and a cable thick tail that lashed the flames around him out into smoke and embers. He was dressed in a long white coat, open at the front, showing a slight but muscly bare chest, and his legs were clothed in close fitted trousers of turquoise warped fabric.

"Oh, I am a pyromancer." he replied. "I'm also an incubus. And I never claimed to have control of either of those aspects." He smiled that warm smile again, then threw out his hand and blasted a raging inferno of red and orange at her. Akui threw herself to the side, jets of fire blasting from her ankles, and hurled a handful of flames at him. It broke over his raised arms, and the last of the fire dissipated with a wave of his hand.

"Incubus, huh?" Akui panted, blasting herself closer to throw a punch at his head with a flame coated fist. He sent it flying up with a block from underneath, and struck at her gut. "Aren't they a myth?"

"I seem real enough." replied the demon, ducking a swing and sending her flying back with a blast of fire.

"Fair point." Akui coughed, winded. She looked past the incubus to the outpost, and swore under her breath. Her squad was falling back under blasts of fire that shook the air and smashed craters into the ground. They fell back even as she watched, only Amarta standing her ground to cover her retreating allies with jets of golden fire and light.

"You've lost here." observed the demon, stepping forwards. "You could flee. I am not without mercy, and would certainly think no less of you for not sacrificing your life for a lost cause."

Akui growled to herself. Her fire core flared within her, ready to unleash itself at him, but she knew he was right. Even if she could defeat a demon, and she wasn't sure he could, she doubted she'd get out alive.

"I'll be back for you soon enough. You and all the rest of the Empire." she snarled at him, before launching herself backwards off the cliff. Anger still smouldered in her gut as she plunged towards the lava for the second time that day, and once again it burst out of her back in flaming feathers, and with a crackle of fire she winged her way across the lava towards her squad.

***

The pink haired Incubus demon named Paradiso watched the soul fire wielder vanish over the lava, still smiling to himself. She was a rather impressive fighter, especially when she started to let out her anger, and he found himself hoping that they would duel again.

Something vibrated in a discreet pocket of Paradiso's coat, and he fingered it out without looking. It was a small square of silver, which at the tap of a button expanded into a flat oblong with a dark screen - a phone, the latest technology from the labs of the Archangel Imperium. He switched the screen on, swiped aside a few unimportant messages, then accepted the incoming call.

The screen went dark again, then the camera projected a beam of light upwards. Standing in it was a perfect 3D image of a tall, pale demoness, with icy turquoise eyes and wavy blue hair.

"Lady Sin." Paradiso inclined his head.

"Paradiso." replied the Imperium's ruler. "Has all gone to plan?"
"Yes my lady. They have been driven in the direction of the tomb, but still believe us to be Imperials."

"Good." replied Sin. Her voice was clipped and professional, if a tad impatient. "Strike them again if they go the wrong way. They must find the princess."

"I'm still not sure why." murmured Paradiso. "Would she not pose us a threat?"

Sin looked at him languidly for a moment, the expression of one without the slightest need for worry.. "Perhaps. But she is also the key to their destruction. And it is a destruction we will bring."