Toren Daen
A sound like the detonation of a bomb stacked upon itself a dozen times over echoed outward. It was like an explosion crossed with the sound sheet metal makes when rattled, except ramped up to absurd decibels and with a bit of reverb.
Needless to say, most of the mages around Kaelan and I fell to their knees. But I was unaffected: the spell inside the beast core had been made of my own mana, meaning that it could not harm me if I didn't want it to.
I fished inside my dimension rune, using the distraction provided to withdraw another beast core. Inside the bluish sphere, a white rune floated serenely, far more stable in appearance than the earlier sound bomb.
I caught a quick glimpse of Naereni and Hofal dropping to the ground, intent on ambushing the mages concussed by the sound bomb. But I didn't have much time to look.
I crushed the beast core in my hands. It cracked like stone, splintering and releasing the captive spell inside. Mist burst from the orb, billowing outward like the wall of a storm. It engulfed everything in a five-yard radius instantly, dampening the senses of all who were unaware and unkeyed to the spell.
Karsien's spells were versatile as hell. If he envisioned a person's mana signature as he cast his cloaking spells, the mist would not obstruct their senses. And considering my own senses remained as keen as ever, I knew it was a success.
Kaelan Joan, however? She was trapped in a swirl of deathly fog, unsure as to what had just happened.
Thank you, Karsien, I thought. The man had promised me a shot at Kaelan Joan. This was as close as anything.
I rushed at the woman, using all the speed I could muster. My blade carved through her side, streaking blood and breaking through her electric defenses. She screamed in agony.
I relished that scream. When I heard it, I could almost imagine that it washed away the pain in my shoulder.
I threw a hook at the woman, but she darted backward, trying to escape the mist. I followed in dogged pursuit, harrying her attempts to outmaneuver justice. Wherever she moved, I followed, striking low and not allowing her a second to breathe. Our blades sparked as they bounced off each other, and though each clash left my dagger a little more worn, it also came back with droplets of blood.
Kaelan Joan burst out of the mist, her eyes gleaming with hatred.
And maybe a little fear. Like a predator sensing weakness, I continued after, not letting up on the woman.
She deflected a strike of mine to the side, but I used the momentum to punch her in the ribs, right where I had drawn a line of blood earlier in the mists. She gasped, but the knuckle guard of my dagger connecting with her temple sent her sprawling backward. Electricity sparked off the blow, running down my arm and causing my hand to twitch slightly.
I looked down at my arms. The sleeves of my shirt had burned off a while ago, exposing the red tattoo that snaked from my palm upward. Lightning burns sprawled over my fingers, but the pain was dulled by my adrenaline. My left arm spasmed every now and then from the stab I had taken, the residue of lightning mana sending jolts along my nerves.
My shirt was slowly burning away, too. I couldn't bring myself to care, even if it was one of my last good ones. The signet ring of Named Blood Daen felt warm against my chest, the chain that kept it around my neck cold in contrast.
My brother's murderer stumbled backward, but the brief inspection of myself allowed her to recover. She lashed out with her dagger, electricity coating it as she blurred toward me. We exchanged a flurry of blows, but I had focused myself; centered my anger in a way that drove me on.
The last time she and I had fought, I hadn't even been able to track her movements. But with mana enhancing my vision and the constant practice of the Clarwood Forest backing me, I was able to evade and deflect her blows with precision.
Kaelan Joan snarled bestially at me, recognizing the tide of the fight had turned. I was no longer trapped in her encirclement, and the Rats were systematically taking down the mages in the fog behind me.
It was just me and her now.
The woman thundered forward, tendrils of yellow lightning striking at the ground around her feet. They scorched rivulets into the cobblestones, sending bits of dust into the air.
The dagger forms taught by an asura guided me along in this deadly combat. I watched the woman get more and more frustrated as her attacks failed to connect. The only damage she had done was through the lightning around her lashing out at me, burning me slightly for every exchange. But it was far from enough to actually slow me down.
But fighting was starting to make me fatigued. My muscles burned, and if it wasn't constantly being ionized by close contact with a living bolt of lightning, I was sure there would be sweat on my arms.
One of my counters came up short, a spasm running through my left arm stalling my movement. I recognized it the moment the striker did as well: a gleam in her eyes; some vindictive cruelty in her eyes.
She lunged at me, her needlepoint weapon closing the distance to my sternum. I wouldn't be able to dodge this: my stance was off slightly and overextended. The best I could do was compensate; take the hit. But no.
Unwilling to let the woman draw a drop more of my blood, I pushed my will into my telekinesis crest. I used three pushes again, all layered atop one another against the woman in front of me.
The last time I tried to use my crest to affect this woman, her lightning defenses had automatically destroyed my mana construct before it could act. I was worried the same would happen again.
I shouldn't have been. With the weight of my training backing up my magic, my telekinetic push flared white, shrugging off the little zaps that tried to disperse it. My push connected with my foe, sending both of us tumbling back.
I balanced myself quickly, squaring off with the Joan once more. Only a minute or so had passed since I had escaped the enclosure and the sound of battle within the mist behind me was starting to clear up.
I realized something then, staring across at my nemesis as our blood dripped to the ground beneath us. My breathing was heavy, and my muscles tingled from the fight. I reached a hand up to my mask, grabbing it and ripping it off my face. I threw it to the ground in front of me.
For all the time I'd been in this world, I'd been driven by vengeance against Blood Joan. But the idea of vengeance was vague. What did I actually want to do? Was I going to bleed their family dry, ruining their finances and crippling them economically? Was I going to track down all those who had harmed me and make them face the same pain? Was I only going to expose their corruption and drug dealing?
But as I stalked toward the woman across from me, I knew what I was going to do. I didn't want to admit it to myself; didn't want to acknowledge I could do such a thing.
But as I met the eyes of my brother's murderer, I knew I was going to kill her. I was going to sink my dagger into her heart and twist. Unlike the skaunters of the Clarwood Forest, I would relish each moment of dragging the edge of my blade over Kaelan Joan's body. I moved forward, grim fury fueling each step. I saw Kaelan Joan's own anger waver in the air, like the light of a candle flickering as a storm approaches.
She wasn't used to her enemies fighting back. She didn't know how to handle this.
"I made a promise that day, too," I said, settling back into my stance. "When you killed my brother? When you left him to bleed out in an alley like a dog? I promised Blood Joan wouldn't get to finish the job."
"I'll fucking kill you," Kaelan said, though the way she shuffled backward took the confidence from her statement. "I'm going to kill you, and then I'll hang your corpse atop our gates!"
"No," I said in reply. "You can feel it now. You're powerless here." I narrowed my eyes.
Something about what I said caused the bit of sense that had surfaced to vanish. She rushed me, her spellforms activating and driving her along. She thrust her stiletto forward, a painfully choreographed attack.
I smacked it to the side with my own weapon. But the deflection cost me: my dagger, already battered and worn from the brutal combat I had put it through, shattered in the act. Metal shards sprayed to the side; my weapon finally destroyed.
Kaelan Joan radiated triumph in that split instant. She thought herself victorious. I didn't know what she looked like beneath the mask that had haunted my dreams, but I could feel her smile as she felt victory approaching.
But I pushed on the metal shards with my telekinesis, accelerating them in a flash of white. They impacted my enemy's leg like the spray of a shotgun shell, ignoring her electric defenses and shredding her leg to a meaty pulp.
She screamed in agony as the corpse of my dagger embedded itself into her thigh, giving her dark ensemble a splash of red. Kaelan's lightning-shroud spell cut out, the concentration it must've required completely obliterated by agonizing pain.
And it is not yet done.
I used a push of telekinesis on the striker from above, shoving her down and making her put more weight onto her ruined leg. It predictably buckled from the strain, causing her to tumble down.
It brought her chin directly into the path of my fire-shrouded knee. I felt the satisfying crunch of bone as the blow threw her into the air, the burst of fire obliterating her cloth mask and adding another echoing scream.
Kaelan Joan's body hit the cobblestones in a wet thunk, quivering and screaming in pain. Her leg was unrecognizable above the knee and was bleeding copiously. From what I could see in the darkness, my last attack had shattered her jaw and burned part of her face.
A distant part of my mind diagnosed the injuries, telling me the likelihood of survival and recovery from such a wound. Seeing how much blood was leaking from what I'd done to her leg, I was sure it was a fatal wound. The shrapnel had likely nicked an artery. If the bleeding wasn't staunched in a few minutes, she'd expend her life there.
And as I began my slow march to finish my vengeance, the wretch of a woman tried to claw herself up. Lightning danced around her, fizzling up and sparking intermittently. It looked like what cartoons displayed when a character smashed a fuse box.
Broken.
As I got closer, I could hear her making sounds from her broken jaw. There were tears streaming down her face, meeting the burned section of her chin. She was missing most of her teeth. Kaelan Joan was trying to pull herself away from me, scratching at the cobblestones in an attempt to flee.
I looked at her; looked at what I'd done to this woman, and I felt pity.
Right now, she was another skaunter from the forest, a broken beast that wouldn't survive in the wild. I was reminded of the first time I had used my dagger, ending the life of a mana beast who had tried to kill me. The way my steel sunk into its flesh was visceral and gut-wrenching.
But then I saw her stiletto a few feet from her body, the same one that had tasted my brother's blood. And I was reminded that this was no simple beast. It was a person, with all the cruelty and malice one could possess. Not an animal seeking a way to survive.
I walked toward the struggling wretch, bringing my boot down hard on her dagger as I walked by. My mana-empowered stomp snapped the blade in two.
My hands tightened on the handle of my own dagger, still clutched in my palm. It was shattered, but there were shards attached to it that would finish this job.
As I knelt down next to Kaelan, I noticed that she had short, sandy-blonde hair. She'd always been a black silhouette in my nightmares, a faceless monster that had no human features. But the terror in her eyes as she tried to escape was very, very human.
I remembered my own issues with killing when I first entered this world. The slice of the knife was intimate; a personal way to end a life. But I wouldn't hide from the gruesome nature of what I had to do.
I hesitated for a long moment. Then, with a single, quick flick, I drew what was left of my dagger across the woman's throat. She didn't even seem to notice, the shock and haze from her earlier wound masking whatever cognition she had left.
Carotid artery severed. Less than a minute to bleed out. With current blood loss, less than that, the medical part of my mind provided.
I watched as the lifeblood of my brother's killer painted the cobblestones, flowing out in a pumping rhythm. My breathing began to quicken as the light faded from Kaelan Joan's eyes, a fog overtaking them.
But where Karsien's spell would only temporarily rob one of their senses, the haze that clouded Kaelan Joan's eyes would never relent.
She was dead.
I stared at the body for a moment, the crushing fatigue of my battle catching up to me. My arms had lightning scars all along them, and they burned like nothing else. I was bruised and scraped from where I'd been thrown around, and though my arm had finally stopped spasming, it was still leaking blood. My mana reserves were almost empty, drained from the night and the hard fight just before.
I took a shuddering breath, a couple of tears fighting at the edges of my vision. God, I'd just killed a person. A living, breathing person.
I stared at the corpse, questions bouncing about in my head. I didn't think I had the grounds to decide if people deserved death, but if there was anyone in this world who was close, it would've been this woman.
I shook my head, turning back to the battle that was wrapping up in the mists behind me. It had only been a couple of minutes since I'd exited that fog, but I was ready to jump back in if I was needed.
I could filter this later. Tackle whatever it meant for me.
Then something impacted me from the side, sending me hurtling into a nearby building. I cracked my head against the wood, which cratered where my body hit. Stars flashed across my vision, the rest of my senses going white. I could just make out somebody strolling out of the fog.
I pulled myself out of the cratered wooden wall, then stumbled as pain radiated from my back. I'd probably broken a rib or two.
My mind took a few moments to try and process what had just struck me.
What happened? What hit me?
I started to pull mana from my core, trying to reinforce my body, but I was running dry. The comforting warmth of the energy helped wash away some of my bleariness, though.
A man was looking down at the corpse of Kaelan Joan, a strange expression on his face. He was stroking his chin, peering at the body like it was a merchant giving him a sour deal.
He had sandy blonde hair and was flanked by constructs of solid flame. They looked kind of like cats, though their outlines shifted and blazed as they pawed around the mage. They prowled about, incredibly lifelike. I could sense the fire mana roiling within them.
"Well, it was only a matter of time before she picked a fight she couldn't win," the man whistled, an imitation of a smile stretching onto his face. His teeth were bright and glistening like fangs poised to bite. "Oh, dear sister, I'll tell our brother you tried your best."
The man turned to me. "Can't forget about you, though!" he said, striding forward. His cocky attitude felt familiar somehow, but I couldn't place it. My mind was working at a hundred miles an hour, trying to assess this new threat. Could I fight? With my mana so low and my body already wounded, I wasn't sure how much of a struggle I could actually put up.
Was escape an option? A flick of my eyes told me that the mist spell was still up. What was taking them so long?
"You know, Toren," the man said, speaking my name with amused familiarity, "Kael really wanted you for herself tonight. She said she'd slit my throat in my sleep if I interfered." He gestured back to the corpse. "I didn't interfere."
I could practically feel his smile like a physical force. "You let your sister die?" I asked, thrown for a loop by his statement. This man was one of the Joans?
He stopped ten feet or so from me. "You killed her," he said nonchalantly. "You were stronger than her. She challenged somebody she shouldn't have. Also, Kael got rid of allll of our patrols. The vindictive bitch wanted to fight you alone. She was right about one thing, though."
My eyes jumped from his catlike summons and back to him. They had moved to flank me, slowly creeping in from both sides.
"You survived the trap we set. I thought you'd burn like a matchstick. Shows what I know!"
The man's jovial demeanor kept me off balance. But no matter how friendly he was acting, I couldn't let myself be surrounded. "So you're going to kill me? Prove yourself stronger somehow by fighting a weakened opponent?"
The man shook his head. "You know something, Toren?" He cracked his knuckles, saying my name as if we were old friends. Then he flared his mana. I felt it press against me from all sides, making my breath hitch. He was probably as powerful as his sister had been.
I needed to regroup, make it back to the—
My planning was cut short as a fist rocketed toward my jaw. I clumsily slipped the punch, trying to shift and attack, but I felt something sharp and hot clamp down on my leg.
Looking down, I saw the construct of solid fire sink its teeth into my leg. I screamed as it bit down, sinking jaws into my shin, then pulled me off balance. Another fist came from below, thundering right into my kidney. I crumpled, the pain the final straw on a long list of wear and tear I'd put my body through.
No, I thought to myself desperately. Get up! Don't let him kill you!
The man knelt down, looking at me as I slowly faded in and out of consciousness. "My siblings? They like to hide what we are. Wear their masks, whether that be of cloth or courtesy." The Joan looked back at the corpse of his sister. "Well, sibling singular. But me?" He smiled toothily. "I know I'm a monster. It's a shame you'll have to learn that personally."
His next punch knocked me from consciousness.