Rue didn’t recognize the guy whose aura was flaring out in every direction to grab hold of the dust and drag it down out of the air, but she certainly knew the other man following along at a leisurely pace. Raf’s face had haunted enough of her nightmares that she doubted she could ever forget it. Even knowing they were practically guaranteed to face some Hellions on the battlefield today, she hadn’t expected it to be him who showed up.
“Take care of the other two,” Raf told his minion. “And keep that fucking ghoul from interfering.”
With the billowing dust clouds firmly suppressed, the battlefield was surprisingly open. Nemari and Od had gotten a little bit too far apart, but other than that, everything had been going according to plan up until Sorin had arrived too late to pick up the whole gang.
Even that wasn’t outside the realm of possibility, but they’d expected slightly weaker opposition. Rue could tell just from the auras that these guys were rank 9 or 10, maybe 11. She wasn’t so good at judging people that strong, but it didn’t feel relevant. They were strong enough to murder the absolute shit out of her team, probably without even really trying. Even having just one of them here was bad news.
Suck it up. Sorin’s fighting two of them by himself. All you have to do is stall until he wins.
She ignored the part of her mind that whispered, ‘if he wins,’ and blocked another strike from the dust ghoul. It was fast, easily as fast as her, but it wasn’t smart, and without the blinding clouds of dust whipping around it, it didn’t seem quite so threatening. They’d all taken anti-toxins to counteract the poison on its claws already, so really it was just a big bag of meat they needed to hit enough to get it to stop moving now.
“Did you really think you could just run away from me?” Raf asked as he advanced. “That I would just let you leave? Do you have any idea how much an umbral goat eye costs? You have years of work left on your contract.”
A sudden image of Raf the first time she’d seen him flashed through her mind. She could remember him standing there, half hidden in the shadows while Jorn loomed behind her, his hands locked on her shoulders to keep her from running. Eldart had been lurking in the background, a cruel smirk curling his lips as Raf laid out exactly what she was going to do, how she was going to do it, and when she was going to have it done by, or else.
She’d been terrified, a rank 0 who’d just gotten her first soulprint barely two weeks before and who was rapidly awakening to the fact that the people she’d borrowed against didn’t want money to pay them back. Or rather, they did want money, but they wanted something else, too. They wanted her to betray everyone she’d ever known, everyone she cared about, to be a liar and a thief.
God, he was terrifying back then. It really wasn’t that long ago, either. Funny how fast things can change.
“Like you ever had the slightest intention of letting me go,” Rue spat out. Her grip tightened on the hilts of her swords. “You know what? You don’t seem so fucking scary now, Raf. Let’s see what you’ve got.”
“Little girl thinks she’s all grown up because she’s got a few weeks of experience under her belt and got carried up to Floor 2. You ungrateful little shit. I’m going to beat you to a bloody pulp with my bare hands, just to remind you of your place. And then I’m going to cut out those pretty little eyes of yours to replace the one I wasted on you, since you’re worthless as a spy now. After that, well, I’ll find some use for you, don’t you worry.”
Rue had heard enough. She rushed forward, dodging past a sudden spike of earth that jutted up in front of her thanks to Aura Sense showing her the anima lashing out of the mage to infuse the ground. Raf just laughed and raised bare fists while he waited for her.
“Rue!” Nemari yelled out from behind. “Don’t be stupid about this! You’re letting him get under your skin!”
But she was wrong. Rue knew exactly what she was doing, and convincing Raf that she’d lost control was part of the plan. Raf had a couple ranks on her and was probably stronger and faster. He was definitely more experienced, even if he’d also been carried to his current position. Most people in the Black Hellions had been.
What he didn’t know was that Rue knew what kind of soulprints he used, and she’d already countered them. She was going to bleed for her victory, but as long as no one interfered, she could win.
* * *
Nemari wanted to rush after Rue, but the earth mage had her pinned down, almost literally. The man was so far beyond what she was capable of that it wasn’t even funny. He was simultaneously holding the dust storm from the floor guardian at bay, the guardian itself in a cage made of stone, and firing off small, thumb-sized stones at speeds so fast it was hard to even see them whizzing by.
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Thankfully, he’d targeted the ghoul with that cage first, because if she hadn’t seen what it looked like as it rose from the ground, he might have caught her, too. He’d already tried twice, but she’d dodged out of the way quickly enough to avoid it. It wasn’t a fast spell, but if she didn’t pay attention, there was every chance he’d snag her.
Probably the only reason he hadn’t killed her was that she was hurling a constant stream of firebolts his way, which were apparently threatening enough that he spent as much time lifting wide, flat sheets of stone out of the earth to hide behind as he did attacking. Those few stones he did shoot off at her sparked off her new barriers, but that was a losing proposition for her. It cost far more anima to defend against a shot than the enemy was spending to make it.
That did not stop him from applying pressure to Odric, either. Their healer had gone on the offensive, charging at the earth mage with that ridiculous club held in one hand. Odric barely knew how to swing it, not that clubs were all that complicated, and it wouldn’t serve him well in this fight. He proved himself a crafty opponent, though, when he got close and rather than swinging it, he flung the weapon at the mage’s face.
His face twisted into an almost comical look of surprise for half a second before the wood struck him. “Son of a bitch!” he yelled out in a nasally tone, clutching at a broken nose and losing track of Odric just long enough to get punched in the face again. Small black lines radiated outward, but the earth mage had something to counteract the poison, because they quickly faded.
A wave of earth rolled out in every direction, waist high and fast enough to catch Odric and carry him ten feet away. He sprawled out onto his back when he landed, but was already rolling over and climbing to his feet before the mage could follow up. Nemari took the opportunity to toss out a few more enhanced firebolts, mostly to tie up the earth mage’s attention while Odric recovered.
Even if we were making even trades, I’d run dry long before him. How much is he wasting controlling the dust? How much does that cage the ghoul is trapped in cost him?
Somehow, she doubted it was enough of a burden for them to win the fight. Even if it was, there was still the floor guardian itself to deal with, not to mention five other climbers. Nemari had caught the one with the pointed goatee’s speech, and it wasn’t hard to guess his identity even before Rue had named him. She was attacking wildly now while Raf laughed at her, further provoking a reckless flurry of slashes that the older climber was blocking with his bare hands.
Nothing Nemari did got through the mage’s defenses. It wasn’t like she had a lot of options to begin with—Curse Sorin for being right—but the enemy mage was picking them off without even appearing to try. Even Odric was struggling to touch the man now that his sucker punch had been used. All the broken nose had really accomplished was to piss the man off.
Okay, if I can’t hit him, what can I hit? Raf? Probably not unless I want to cook Rue, too. Sorin’s fight is too far away to help with. There’s nothing le—Oh! That’s an idea.
It was risky, but she was betting the earth mage would prioritize keeping that magic stabilized. It would probably drain his anima faster than defending against her directly was, and he likely wouldn’t see it coming.
Nemari started building up a firebolt as big as she could, feeding it with Flare and Sear to grow it from a simple F-rank attack to something with explosive force. It took a few seconds and a full fifth of her total anima, almost ten times what she spent on a normal firebolt, before it was ready.
Then she detonated it against the dust ghoul, shattering its cage and throwing it into the air amidst a massive bloom of dirt and stone. Unbothered, it hit the ground hard and immediately lunged for the earth mage and Odric, who’d used the distraction to grab the man’s arm and bring him to the ground. They rolled around, one trying to kick the other away and escape, the other desperately clinging to him.
The ghoul pounced on them, and the earth mage got the worst of it. Poison claws ripped into him, drawing thin lines of blood. More claws found Odric, but Stone Skin mostly protected him. The anti-toxin would help, and Odric could cleanse himself if he absolutely needed to. The only problem was that now there was absolutely no way she could toss firebolts into that brawl without accidentally hitting Odric.
Determined to help Rue, Nemari switched targets. Raf was considerably weaker than the earth mage, weak enough that perhaps Nemari could help Rue kill him quickly if she got a clean opening, then all three of them could gang up on the remaining climber. Even that might not be enough, not against a rank 10. Truthfully, if they’d been fighting to kill, the Black Hellions would have already ended the fight instead of wasting time trying to form cages around them.
That was the plan, at least, until a stone pillar slammed up into the dust ghoul, hurling it into the air to land right in front of Nemari. The stupid undead didn’t care who had cast the spell, of course. It had gone after the closest victim when she’d broken its cage, and it was following the exact same behavior now.
“Nemari!” Odric yelled, but he couldn’t have disengaged with the earth mage even if he’d wanted to. At this point, they both had bands of stone snaking out of the ground and looping around them. That couldn’t be good for Odric, but he’d have to figure that out on his own.
The ghoul didn’t even bother getting back upright. It just hit the dirt, bounced once, then flipped over and scrambled toward her on all fours. Its jaw hung open, half detached on one side to reveal a row of crooked, broken, rotting teeth and a purple tongue that hung way too far out of its mouth to be natural.
Nemari did the only thing she could. She hurled a firebolt into the floor guardian’s face and ran for her life. Even with the anti-toxin, she knew getting caught was a death sentence. Never mind the poison, it would simply tear her to bloody shreds before moving on to the next victim.
It was too bad that no amount of firebolts would slow it down. She threw them anyway, hoping to burn away something important, but the ghoul barreled through them. With each passing second, the distance between them shrank. Then it smacked into her back and drove her to the ground, blasting the wind out of her lungs. Fire and heat rolled off her, but it wouldn’t be enough to save her, and she knew it. Unless someone came to her rescue in the next few seconds, she was a dead woman.
