The Children of the Lake 13
"Blades! Rosen!"
Aleh had no time to watch as his comrades followed the unspoken command, joining the battle outside, nor to don his sensorial deprivation bindings, the most basal precaution in connecting to a foreign organism's own Asha. "Raw and quick", as a certain mentor of his used to put, would have to suffice.
Another impact rang, the opposite wall concaved with each blow. A few more charges and the Child of the Lake would pierce through the steel sheets keeping the homunculus' resilient yet soft tissues protected, and from there no amount of Arts could prevent the carnage.
He closed his eyes and pushed his Asha outwards through willpower alone. Dull witted, the homunculus would take far too long to reciprocate, so he hurried the connection along through merurgical messages. The merging started a moment later, a metaphysical nightmare, analogous to allowing some enormous spider to sink innumerable fangs into his thorax, feeling its venom flood into liquefying viscera.
Not far from the metaphor, the homunculus drank him with relish, each gulp expanding Aleh across its own flesh. He felt himself cramping between layers of metal, given just enough space to grow the bare necessities to his existence, the frustration of eyes what would never open and mouths that would never taste, dizzying ethereal perspectives overlapping and overcoming the mundane.
There was no one manner to perceive the Lesser Planes. A fellow Sect witch saw a phantasmagoric, lifeless wasteland; an academy peer, researching below the noses of the yine institute of his own accord, beheld a nightmare of flames and mummified landscapes, forsaking the practice on the spot. When Aleh, over a decade ago, peered through the membrane with the help of some unspeakable relic, he was not surprised to see the World of Golden Sands bloom around him.
Keeping his eyes open was pure torture. The allusion to the Sect's childish conceptualization of Merurgy struggled to accommodate its true nuance, becoming an impossible plain of madness as compromise: inconsistent and unstable, bordering on amorphous, however inviting, intriguing, tempting his sight deeper, begging to be unveiled with the promise of countless secrets hidden beneath the pain.
Another impact jostled him from his near fatal daftness, the screeching rake of claws reminding him of his priorities. He let the homunculus deeper, thus himself as well. Two became one when he could no longer hear the hammering of his heart.
The Oke had covered itself in a surface of thorns, but the Child seemed unbothered, its gargantuan mass of tendrils clinging to their flank while burrowing a hole through them. Not unlike prickling the water itself, the enormity of the foe belied its slipperiness, resembling some stories of maritime phantasms who preyed on the superstitions of sailors, always present but never there.
This would not stand. The thorns might lack the physical components and ashic wholeness to become a weapon to match the opponent, yet it was hard not to smile. A beast of such magnitude might have held such confidence in its innate powers as to cast the insult of ignorance, but oh would it rue the moment it underestimated a magnum work of witchcraft!
On command, four great Ashic hooks clamped its sides, drawing deafening wails as each deployed lines of barbs. Pressure was exerted into the Child to restrain its movements, a provisional measure but an effective one.
"Almalilly, beneath the panel, small liver shaper organ to the left of the front bash!" their voice reverberated across their innards.
"Found it!" she said, and after a brief discomfort of having their organs fondled, the results spoke for themselves. Muscles connecting them to their wheels engorged, contracted, then calcified, restraining the mechanism and driving a series of organic spikes into the flattened soil of the road.
Next came their comrades. Atop the Oke, Blades struck with a series of lunges, her rapier incapable of cutting deep into the Child yet enough to hurt. Its howls shrilled, and a dozen tendrils surged over the roof. How unfortunate, then, that Blades was a seasoned soldier, potent and merciless in her Ashic counteroffensive, leaving the Child reeling and them a modicum envious.
With great effort, under a downpour of thrusts, it tore itself from their side. Alas, their hooks were too frail to match its strength and thus had to be abandoned post-haste before it could inflict them, him, further Ashic damage. Less than a second submerged into its reserve of water, the foe engaged in one of the Azure's most infamous tricks, vanishing in plain sight.
To see nothing in the Lesser Planes was impossible, even the air bore Merurgy and Asha, yet the truth was undeniable and there was nothing there. Nothing to hold the liquid veil aloft, to examine their defenses for weaknesses, to fool him had he not known better. A fascinating topic of research, that Obscuring, were the circumstances not so desperate.
A premonition nibbled at the back of his mind. Anxious, he sent a signal to both Blades and Rosen, a wave of weak needling to both their feet; the latter threw himself down before the emerging palisade of Ashic thorns, the former took stance, the vivid golden currents of her being pressing tighter. They strengthened the signal until it was indistinguishable from an attack, to no avail.
Both of them must have seen it before it was close enough to be sensed. A quake, the deafening crash of a great wave shaking the Oke, then a fading scream. The palisade had been made of constructs—equivalent in structure to hair or keratin nails in Ashic Art terms—sparing them below from the brunt of the hit, the least of their concerns at the moment. They searched for their comrades.
There, holding on, at first glance unharmed. Bated breath was released from one of several throats, the one which could not bear suffocation for indefinite time. They chided themselves: panicking once was an unfortunate mistake, twice was the realm of blundering, nameless corpses.
A response signal came from Rosen. Specialized in Arts aimed at intrinsic enhancement and combat, neither him nor Blades were capable of even the most rustic of merurgical messaging, and thus had agreed on a simple series of touch-based cues cyphered from standard field communication for faces, capable of transcribing the gist of their needs when the situation otherwise disadvantage speech.
"No use. Help" he said, up and aimed towards the darkness.
At the third wave, the Child's focus fell again toward the Oke. The force of impact sent the bodies inside flying back, momentum absorbed by a translucent panel of light emerging from the wall, leaving a mere mild headache rather than staining the insides in cerebrospinal fluids.
Retaliation was swift, twin trails of merurgy tracing remote kinetic attacks, a tone of yellow darkened to borderline orange across the Golden Sands. Quasi-parasitical weapons which fed from their surroundings and could kill a man armored in steel plate from over ten meters of distance, their comrade's barrage would nonetheless go no further than battering the fucker, although even that little against an Heir was fantastic.
These excellent black market goods, gifts of the dawning Revolution, superior to the works of the ever esteemed works of the Sect's witch corps, convinced the Child from another full blown crash, however did not dissuade it, as their metal shell was once again scraped under the silent shroud of water.
They would need to take a more active hand in this battle. With a deep breath, they focused on that hostile impression, a dozen mouths singing in unison in a language known yet not in the least spoken, a chant that according to their worst mentor could be translated to something along these lines:
"Woe to lie believed. Follow in diseased circle. To thee loving bile."
An archaic crutch, vile to behold. Yet, Poison in the bloodstream. The beast imbibed of hatred flowing, crystallized infection knapped into a river of minuscule spearheads, not one drop of elegance to their aim, rostrums of toxin craving any tender entrance they could pierce.
There was a moment in a witch's life where, regardless of how talented, how skilled, how much knowledge was gathered and works created, a single form of Art had to be picked and them chiseled to better fit it. Nothing could be everything, nothing within dashi reach at least. Aleh's had inspired disappointment and ridicule among supposed peers. Those who claimed to be above the irony fell for it twice as hard: Illusion conjured images were an illusion in themselves. The mortal mind was not the main target of the discipline.
The rostrums emerged into the Upper Plane, merurgical figures in the physical world, and devoured. The Child yowled at their touch, disturbing to the sight and putrid to the touch, but falsehoods were falsehoods and the burning infection would be real for just a moment, until it would not. They would need something more to win.
How unfortunate, then, that something stood quivering in the corner.
All those fighting were faces. Accomplices, masks, and serfs to the Faceless, shields and pens but never blades, with neither the body nor the training to wield the Sect's execution armaments. All they could do was hope for the monumental fortune that would see them wounding the Heir enough it fled. Blades, second toughest Face he had ever met, might get them there in circa a thousand cuts; if she survived three blows, he would know luck was on their side.
Disgusting, that they were forced to bear that Furfu inside of them. How far did the powerful fall! What form of madness had overtaken Marquise when entrusting her with such a sensitive mission was beyond comprehension. Were they fucking? Could that shrinking animal have obtained blackmail on her? No, she would be dead if that was the case.
"Almalilly!" They screamed.
"Here!" she said.
"Two things: first, storage compartment D, there is a fetish towards the panel, a stone in the shape of a large seed and engraved with active scriptures, a band of desiccated sinew nailed on top. Give it to Blades!"
"And the second?" she asked, rummaging through the hidden compartment in the cabin.
Aleh pointed at that thing. "Please get this fucking coward moving out and helping before we all die!"
They heard the moment she called for Blades, handing the fetish before shutting the hatch. Then began the struggle. "Lady Furfu! Lady Furfu!" she said to no response.
That would be her fight now, attention was a scarce resource in these parts. Though the Obscuring effect had yet to cease, Aleh's spell had more to its function than simple harm, first setting all its fragments pierced to slow putrefying, and the second, as an Heir was sure to be powerful enough to resist that, breaking apart and creating a trail of their own merurgy for to be tracked.
"Use thing," was signaled to Blades, "find me, attack, all out."
"Try." was all she said.
A sound gave them pause, a shattering of wood too close to ignore. He sent another signal. "Projectile large careful."
The wave hit a second later. Blades was flawless in her jump, but Rosen miscalculate the angle, was struck square on, and was sent tumbling down the side of the Oke. Blades was quick, landing and falling back to catch him, but too late as he hit the waters.
Fetish shining in the likeness of a living, pumping organ, Blades reignited her offensive, projectile after projectile chasing after the Heir, striking true again and again. When she stopped, retreating from its last location, they were perplexed. Sure the weapon still had enough in its reserves for several dozen more attacks before complete exhaustion.
They hadn't noticed the water coalesce to the west. When the Obscuring faded a moment later, a merurgy rich and compact egg had been created above them, the Child coiled at its core.
"Brace yourselves!" Blades scream broke the night. Too late.
In came the infamous Skawlan Fourth.
Weight, restrains, defenses, all meaningless against a might comparable to a meteor. Aleh's connection snapped back with enough strength to blank him out, consciousness at the edge of fading as he struck the anti-concussive enchantment with enough force to shatter bone. No wound, physical or ashic, could protect him from the world shattering crash as his best opus tipped over.
For a few seconds, he felt himself vanish into a void.
Aleh remained on his back, aghast. What an utter fucking joke. His eyes struggled to open, a delirious siren song coaxing lids with a maddening contrast of Planes, Upper fusing with Lower, but that would be a distant concern for the near future. He had failed. Years of preparations and resources wasted on scrap.
"Young Sir!" He heard Rosen scream, kilometers afar. Oh, right, he had been right besides the vehicle, hadn't he? How nice to know he escaped. "Young Sir!"
"Rosen, Get back!" Blades, this time. Her voice didn't sound different, but she couldn't have escaped that unscathed.
The final yell brought him back in full. No words, just the sharp crack of a slap then Almalilly bouncing off the once-ceiling. Craning his neck to the side, disbelief erasing dread, he watched a new crisis unfold.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?!" Almalilly said, cradling a dislocated shoulder. If the blow had touched her face she wouldn't be speaking right now, but her nose was bleeding.
"Y-yes, I-I know," Furfu gibbered, shoulders hunched yet face held still, staring, a cornered animal "I n-need to fight, n-need to defeat the Tales and their Heirs and be p-proud before the L-Lady, and I-I will, I will k-kill them all when I go. But what does a fucking face have to do with it? Who do you think you are to t-touch me, when I never gave you the fucking permission?!"
"Look around you! Who cares about permission right now?! We need you, we might die if you don't—!"
"Then die! Leave me alone! I-I'll fight when I can fight! Who do you think you are to force me out there?" Furfu said, and Aleh wondered if she was aware of how much she trembled as she spat out threats.
"Y-you have to be kidding me. What's the point of you then?!"
Furfu shut up, sliding down the floor on her back, hugging her knees to her chest.
And behind them, Aleh saw the fight unfold without them. With a thud gone dull through the several layers separating them, he saw Rosen's Ashic impression slam against the underside of the Oke. Blades stood to the north, just now starting a new barrage of projectiles as a myriad of Merurgical tendrils headed towards her legs. The moment they made contact, she jolted, but it wasn't enough to freeze the daring Face as she gave up on long range, lunging at the Child in two jumps.
Foolish wouldn't describe it. It was suicide. A prop in the theatrics of this aberrant. Their only hope rejected them, an abomination built to kill too afraid to fight.
Often had Aleh read of fury being described as a blaze, burning, all consuming, eager to escape control. He understood the simile, after all he couldn't claim to have never been caught in its tongues, acted in manners unfit of his design to let it eat. This time, however, its came frigid, honed like the blizzards of the southern continents, bringing in its winds clarity and a memory.
It happened a month back, when Holly arrived and he became aware of Marquise's incomprehensible decision of sending Furfu to somehow aid in the mission. Aleh did not see himself as a petulant man, although being faced with the idea convinced him that some harsh diplomacy would be warranted this once.
Agare would hear nothing of it. Of course he wouldn't. Still Aleh insisted, mentioning the ways the mission could be compromised if the idea proceeded. He had been sure he, as an extension of Marquise, knew how their dear comrade used to behave, a hypothesis that had to be cast out as new facts came to light.
Consistent debate did earn him one nugget of delightful information, however.
"There may be one way to rail her in." Agare whispered, the closest to conspiratorial Aleh had ever seen the faceless be with anyone outside Marquise. "It is untested, but likely to work."
From the corner of his eyes, Aleh saw Blades fall on both feet, only to be toppled by a wave. The Child stalked on all four limbs to its prey. The mundane world won the battle for his sight, the last remnants of his connection to the homunculus blurring apart to leave fogged eyes behind. He could deal with it later, should he survive.
"My dearest Furfu!" he said, smile crooked. She snapped in his direction, but this was not yet the moment for him to leave the stage. "I wonder, how much of this evening's events would I have to tell your Lady before she kicks you to the gutter?"
She froze. Though he didn't understand faceless anatomy as well as he wished, he knew they couldn't pale, and above that, he knew Furfu needed no pallor to show how mortified she was.
"Because see, I don't quite understand what skills the Marquise saw in you to allow your presence here, however I am quite sure a ramping series of, in mine perspective, critical fucking failures would change her mind. Do you not?"
"Y-you wouldn't," she said.
"Me? The kindest, most compassionate of all faces? Imagine! What benefit would I acquire from fucking you over, outside the sight of your person broken and left with not a single mooring fragment of your pathetic life?"
"I-if you do—!"
"You will do what? Kill me? Go ahead! Think you can mangle me enough Agare wouldn't take a glance at the mess and think your mistress' dream was pulped by some whimpering little shit and mince you?!"
She went silent.
"And don't you think for a second the Marquise would be willing to forgive you. Not over this. You know her less than I do, and even you know the kind of person that you will force her to become again. So if you don't want this nightmare to somehow end even worse for you, I suggest that—"
His turn to freeze. A blade of a dull brown so dark it bordered black emerged from her cowl, point blunt yet a vision of terror with its thick blade and long length. The Warcleaver, one of the most fearsome weapons to grace Ivian soil, brought by the Lion Dynasty of the Yine with its conquest of the archipelago and tainted in reputation by the ages of Aenexian terror. Yet, not as horrible as its material.
Demonium. A metal birthed by a creational mistake and one of the few things capable of cauterizing the Starlit World's rot. A material both too soft and too dense for regular warfare yet one of the most coveted by the sect. To his mundane eyes, nothing but an ugly taupe without shine; in the world of Golden Dust, that same revolting tone of dark yellow one found in Type-3 Merurgy, the natural type of Merurgy emitted by decomposition and the abominations said process births.
The same that—
"Get out of my way."
Furfu's words brough him back from his musing. Despite knowing he risked pushing her too far, he waited until she pushed him aside, the Warcleaver dragging behind. With a thumb, she pulled her glove up just enough to interface with his Homunculus' backdoor biologic lock. The door unlatched, and water poured inside.
She didn't appear to care. Throwing the doors open, she howled a madmen's battlecry before joining the conflict.
Within a centimeter of his death, Fordu evaded the blur.
He didn't allow the Azure out of his sight for so much as a tenth of a second. It had barely completed its charge when it vaulted up a tree, using it as platform to launch itself into a dizzying sequence of dashes. A distraction, he realized, as something cooled the sole of his boots, a second distraction. He fainted surprise at the water dragging itself up his feet, waiting.
Awareness helped him little. The next blow came at a speed unusual even for an Heir of the Azure, another close call were it not for the helmet under his cowl. He tore himself out of the growing pond as he jumped for cover.
"A helmet?" it grunted in Skawlan dialect Ivian, its voice echoing from all directions as it repositioned itself for the next round. "It was my belief your ilk didn't make use of such contraptions. Doesn't it get in the way of your specialty?"
He lost no time in tearing his damaged dampening boots out. The longer this conflict prolonged, the worst it became: with the fall of night, the Floodlands were too dark even for his standards, and every loss in visibility became a devastating disadvantage against an enemy this mobile.
"Such an enlightening adversary you have been! But not one of many words, are you?" It said. "And so passive. Is it pride that holds your hand?"
Another chill. By now, it should have understood Divinity would have little effect on him, so why—
Of course.
Fordu rolled aside, striking on the same beat as it fell from directly above. The double edged shortsword clashed against the creature's carapaced arms, scratching a shallow chink in its armor, just deep enough for its properties to kick in. Flimsy a weapon it was Demonium sizzled the wound, the creature growling in agony, fleeing and creating enough distance for him to analyze his foe.
It was nothing unexpected for its kind. Gaunt limbs bearing both exoskeleton and endoskeleton, finger with thick claws the length of daggers and stiff joints, a slim naked torso bordering the anorexic, elongated neck and head ending in almost the shape of a snout, though this one bore no extraneous or vestigial body parts visible. The slit of its eyes were engorged, easier to find and potentially damage than Holly's. It was dark, though the fine details of its color and skin patterns were difficult to tell.
It stood from its crouch before dropping into a quick bow, knees bent and arms pointed downwards with finger clenched, a Skawlan challenger's courtesy.
"Pashel Di Aila. Our family remembers what your kind did, and we do not forgive."
He swerved, faster than what even the trained human eye would be able to follow, striking low from the flank. The first blow he avoided with a parry, the second he escaped by falling back, but the Azure gave no quarters. All he could do was hold on; the sword shattered in half, the armor over his right arm was cut to the steel plate in between its layers, his enchanted cuirass was gouged open; an arrogant move in between the attacks, aiming for a quick decapitation, became his only respite.
Loathed him to admit, the Heir was skilled. However, for all their speeds differed, he was more than its equal in physical prowess. Letting a bait part his skin, he slapped the blow down with the pommel and punched, leaving the Heir to stumble back as he followed with a slash to its legs, too slow as its rolled back to escape.
"No response? No acknowledgment? Were you taught no mannerisms? Or has your transformation left you mute?" it said. "Rude, yet so interesting..."
By the time the last word had left its lips, Fordu had already vanished into the vegetation. Keep it thinking that it had the upper hand, and further opportunities would come.
The moment Foroca II had sprung her trap, Fordu had seen the writing on the walls. There had always been only so much coincidence he was willing to swallow, and the entire situation pushed his limits tremendously. His mistake was in assuming to know where exactly laid the rub, and as a result he had been caught off guard by the Azure.
His fists clenched for an instant, but he calmed himself. Hubris was a flaw that always followed his steps close, but here was not the place for self admonishment.
That the Azure was on Holly's trail there had never been any doubt. From the half-bloods skulking in the Hollows, to those who stood on their way as they left Marquise's headquarters at Ivian Chain, they had known where she had been and surmised where she could have gone. The message delivered in Galehold had been unfortunately early, but the eventuality had been considered before. The only thing—
He jumped, the roots he stood a moment before destroyed as the Heir pounced. Fordu had no time to turn, however, as two feet struck him on the back, crumbling his armor and cracking his ribs, sending him flying. He landed in a wide, dried basin with a twist, quickly gathering his bearings before the blow of grace could come.
"How ironic, isn't it?" the Heir gloated, nowhere and everywhere at once, "That bodies both divine and apostatic would hold such parallels. You move, the earth rumbles, yet I don't hear your steps. I move, not a leaf is blown out of place, yet I stand predicted once more. Does you kind not question where these differences originate from?"
The only thing he wondered was if this Heir had come alone. The Azure tended not to, but he had left too many chances for a second enemy to exploit, none which were taken. There were branching possibilities there, worrying ones. If they had come but divided their forces...
It was the worse case scenario, and the one he should work from for now. But so long as this Azure in specific was alone here, the immediate scenario was manageable.
His current weapon, a common executioner gift once held by Foroca and first victim of the battle, had been a decent weapon but also a stop-gap measure, made for symbolism more so than effect, specially against the divine. If he intended to win, another would need to take its place, and there was the problem.
Bringing out Hagan in an emergency situation, under the Domain of a paranoid Fire Blossom had already been a risk. No matter the measures taken, it left lingering signs that could not be erased. If the news of its possession were to spread to anyone at such an important juncture, the mission might be as good as over.
And if he refused to use it, it would be all the same, would it not?
To the east, the Heir of Azure landed in a crouch. "It is a sin to be curious," the Heir said. "To toil in the filth is tantamount to subsuming it into my veins. Else, I might have dragged you all the way back to—"
"Heir of the Azure Tale!" He said, and the creature jolted, much to his amusement. He took the silence and pushed forward. "Detritivore of vile abyss, Child of a scum-veined Mother!"
It hissed. "You dare-"
"Today, I grant you the favor of cessation. Let not your mercy wait any longer!"
Until now, the Heir had been a teasing predator, content with playing with its prey as much as hunting. If he wanted the right moment to come, he would have to do away with that, and survive.
If the creature tried to smile or flash its teeth he didn't know, all he saw was a stiff quirk of lip and a parting of jaws. "If you so prefer, let us abandon the niceties. I will eviscerate you, blasphemous roach!"
It dropped down to the basin, and charged.