Book 2 - Chapter 54 - Feeding Thanatos (Patreon)

Ranthia exited her tent to find Remera in the grip of a dark mood. The armies that rushed toward them weren’t yet in view, but no man or woman had any doubt of what was to come. Instead of properly addressing the legionaries’ concerns, [Leaders] milled about trying to maintain order—as if that was going to help anything.

It wasn’t her problem. She wasn’t in charge of these people, she wasn’t a [Leader] of men.

And yet… It was hard to feel the tension in the air and not find herself back in the mindset of the Unbreakable Image. Morale made armies into champions or sundered them long before the battle ever began. And it was hard to imagine that she could face her people ever again if she tried to ignore it.

They hadn’t been her problem either, but she chose to lead her people at the Unbreakable Image. She wasn’t a [Leader], but she was an Adventurer and a Ranger—she knew the power of a group. Ranthia rushed to the staging ground and leapt atop a weapon rack for a bit more height.

“Soldiers of the mighty Legions of Remus! Brave champions of Khazad! And the dwarves that fight for the legacy of Nolgrod! Let us present arms! May the gods and your ancestors watch closely and see the might we wield!” Ranthia roared over the din of crumbling order.

She raised her own knives as she spoke the final line. The assembled forces around her paused uncertainly, but enough followed her command that it created a momentum. Spears, swords, axes, and more rose into the sky as the crowd fell into something adjacent to silence and gave her their attention.

“Let those who watch down from on high see our valor! May the steel of our blades and our hearts serve as our prayers and proof of our right to succeed! To Xaoc, the God of Chaos, we shall demonstrate our fury and passion! To Aion, the Goddess of Life, we shall demonstrate the fervor to which we cling to the life She has bestowed upon us! To Papilion, the God/dess of Change, we shall demonstrate our limitless adaptability! To Thanatos, God of Death, we offer the lives of every last shimagu that dares to come to us—and hey, guess what, Thanatos, you’re getting two-for-one every time we kill one of those fucking parasites!”

Approval roared from the crowd.

…She didn’t want to, but it would be noted if she left the last goddess out.

“And to Seira, Goddess of Order, we will demonstrate that we are willing to tear through the shimagu forces and take back our orderly days of peace!”

It was a bit sloppy, but her heart really wasn’t in that one. Still, the crowd seemed to enjoy it well enough.

“And may every dwarf here prove to their ancestors that they are some of the best damned fighters their lineage has ever produced!”

The roars were especially enthusiastic; the dwarves had impressive volume.

“To everyone that watches over us—god, goddess, ancestor, or anyone else that chooses to witness what is to come—may our steel and our resolve be all that you require of us! May each and every one of you watch over us and bear witness to our triumph! Remera has broken one army before, and this will be no different!”

Ranthia was no [Leader], no. But she had learned the basics in the Unbreakable Image. And, at the very least, she knew how to work a crowd of fighters. In truth, in many ways, legionaries and dwarven soldiers were no different than a bawdy group of Adventurers. All she truly had to do was remind them that they were badasses and that their enemies should fear them.

“The gods have favored Remus! The ancestors have preserved Khazad! And the ancestors of Nolgrod are hungry to see those that bear their lineage cut down all that oppose us! [Bards] might sing songs of what is to come someday, but fuck ‘em! We are our own song! A song of chaos, a song of life, a song of blood! And we will be the rhythm that drowns out and erases every last parasite that dares to approach us!”

Okay, yes, the speech would have worked better had the enemy appeared in that moment. She had riled them up—their people were primed and ready. Which meant that the impromptu speech was somewhat wasted with it concluding to an indeterminate wait.

But at least she was (more-or-less) confident that she had pulled morale out of its downward spiral—for the time being. Still, she was done speaking, so she concluded things with a display of acrobatics. Ranthia jumped and kicked off of increasingly tall objects and structures until she gained enough leverage to get herself atop the wall, where she turned to face the direction that their allies—and after, enemies—would eventually emerge from.

As an afterthought, she sent an image on top of that inane tower of stone, one that was poised as if it was ready for anything, bouncing between the balls of its feet. It looked ridiculous, but it looked alive, which had to be good enough for the commander.

Left alone with nothing to do but wait, Ranthia pondered… and regretted. The whole feeding lives to Thanatos bit really was in poor taste, in hindsight. She wasn’t exactly an expert on any deity outside of Xaoc, which had kind of bitten her in the ass. She respected Papilion—change was required for chaos to flourish, but the rest of the gods—even the rest of the five—factored somewhere lower in her esteem. Still, from what she understood of Thanatos, He wasn’t a bloodthirsty god. He was more like a gentle steward of the dead. …Black Crow would be more the one who might love a pile of corpses, maybe, but she had more than mixed feelings about trying to invoke White Dove’s counterpart. They weren’t even a true deity!

But there truly was nothing like the realization that she had committed a bit of sacrilege on the cusp of a major conflict. Damnit, Xaoc was probably displeased that she even made a token effort on behalf of Seira and her stifling order.

Absent anything better to do, Ranthia sent apologetic prayers to both Xaoc and Thanatos—careful to let her mana regenerate between each. It was a bit surprising—and alarming—that Thanatos took so much mana when He received the prayer with an inscrutable snort. She was used to Xaoc hearing her, even if her god didn’t always answer, but when someone prayed to a deity that they had little relationship with—especially without an altar dedicated to the deity—she was under the impression that more likely than not their prayer would go unanswered.

Ranthia fidgeted and tried not to worry about what the attention of the—likely displeased—God of Death might imply. Especially when Xaoc remained silent and absent when He received her prayer.

The 15th Legion finally arrived—several thousand men and women in a not-quite-orderly retreat, fleeing a greater force that bested them. It was unmistakable that their pace increased as they realized they could finally see the sanctuary of their destination, but even with their rush, there was no way they would be able to get the entire army within their walls before the sun was up.

She itched to scout—to see just how close the shimagu force was. Part of that was just an impatience to act. Ranthia had never been Pallos’ most patient woman, but just standing there, wrapped in a traveller’s cloak, felt wrong. Things were happening and a piece of her mind whispered that she was passively letting them happen to her.

Or, possibly, she was just too overfocused on the situation to try and distract herself from how much she just wanted to rush back to Avyna.

In any other circumstances, it would have been comical to watch an entire Legion—spread out in its neat 8x8 grids—try to compress itself and jam its way through the gates of Remera. But they were vulnerable—the sanctity of their base was barred only by a near-panicked press of bodies.

And the shimagu army was faster than the runner had reported. They were already coming into view.

The base commander showed up and launched into a speech, which Ranthia ignored. She doubted she was alone in keeping her focus outward—on the coming thunder of feet.

All too soon, the forerunners from the shimagu began to reach the brewing conflict. It was mostly dinosaurs that could outpace the bulk of the army—and the parasites that were stupid enough to throw their lives away. [Mages] and archers worked to bring them down when they entered range, but here and there legionaries that sought the safety of Remera’s walls died—a stone’s throw from salvation.

Ranthia cursed herself under her breath, but she continued to wait. She needed to counter the twins; she couldn’t let the shimagu’s trash draw her away from where she needed to be.

“From above!” One of the others shouted a moment before Ranthia could.

The clouds were grey and wispy—though they were steadily thickening—but they proved sufficient to conceal the threat until it was too late. Winged beasts of all shapes and sizes emerged, already committed to dives. On instinct, Ranthia began to hurriedly calculate their trajectories—to assess the risks—despite how many there were.

The dark of night was beginning to ease as dawn neared, but no one had been prepared for the sky to suddenly fill with blinding light—greater than a midday sun. It wasn’t mere thunder, instead a full shockwave roared across the battlefield, with enough force to jar those at lower levels. Arrows flew wildly off course and divebombing dinosaurs crashed into their peers. Below, numerous legionaries were stunned by their proximity to the blast.

But the true victim was the top of the stone tower, where Ranthia’s image had once stood. The tower had been diminished and what remained glowed with heat: the aftermath of the grandest lightning strike Ranthia had ever seen.

The Legion at their gates lost all semblance of cohesion. People died as their screaming comrades trampled them in their desperate rush to reach the illusion of safety. The descending beasts crashed into men, tents, and even rock formations well beyond Remera’s walls. Entirely too many arrows found friendly flesh instead of their intended targets—though far more broke uselessly upon the terrain.

It was the worst kind of chaos, one steeped in death and despair.

Ranthia’s indecision lasted just long enough to confirm that her tent—and thus Avyna—was still safe. But she had to act. She chose to assume the most logical—and least horrifying—conclusion: a shimagu twin with a Lightning [Mage] class was nearby. Every other permutation of possibilities was worse. A Storm [Mage] with that kind of power was far beyond Ranthia. A Lightning [Mage] that could do so much damage from extreme range was a base-killer that she couldn’t hope to even locate. And if just any parasite inside a bumbling, unwilling puppet could unleash so much raw devastation, Remus might not survive the war.

So, it had to be a Lightning [Mage] she could find and stop, which meant she needed to move before her adversary found their true target.

Ranthia cast off her cloak, leapt off the wall, and began her hunt.

The shimagu were still arriving at Remera in irregular waves and they had been just as staggered by the insanely potent blast of Lightning as her allies were. Ranthia’s descent was uncontested, but it didn’t take long for her adversaries to start to notice a lone ‘vulnerable’ target. Shimagu that infected dinosaurs noticed her and—completely blind to the irony—came at her alone or in tiny packs.

Ranthia ran normally, but each time an adversary neared she allowed herself a brief dance. A beautiful moment of grace that lasted just long enough to allow Black Crow and her current adversary to meet. The shimagu were bizarrely caught by surprise each time it happened. Few bothered to even use their Skills, instead they came at her with the claws and teeth that they wore—the so-called might of bodies that were far below her level.

They barely slowed her down, but after each kill she resumed running. She didn’t want to draw massive amounts of attention. Lightning was one of the worst elements she could face and the twin that was responsible for the strike that annihilated her image—without warning—plainly didn’t care about collateral damage, given how they fatally fouled the shimagu’s aerial strike. If she let herself get bogged down and called enough attention, it was all too easy to imagine dying alongside eights of shimagu.

No matter how fast she became, some elements were still in a realm beyond what was possible to react to. Lightning was, in some ways, the worst of even that group. If a Radiance or Brilliance [Mage] was stupid enough to telegraph their attacks, she could still dodge—even if she stood no chance of dodging the element. But with Lightning, dodging was almost irrelevant; something about the element innately seemed to be attracted to its target. A near miss with Lightning could still hit her, even if she avoided the [Mage]’s obvious movement. Worse, Lightning spread through what it struck. She couldn’t reliably sacrifice a limb to absorb an attack and even adamantium (presumably) wasn’t a shield against it.

Which meant that her best hope was to do what she had done against the ogress: kill the [Mage] before they ever knew she was a threat.

How hard could it be to get a perfect ambush together on a field of increasingly chaotic battle?

Once she finally started to encounter ogres and more exotic specimens of life on Pallos, she caught snippets of orders and conversations. Tertia wasn’t her only quill pal (hey, it was cute, even if she still preferred to write with charcoal), Ranthia also kept in touch with Paulla. Her expert on the shimagu language had become a star member of the Coalition’s language team in the year and a half since they escaped the Unbreakable Image. Between her updates and Ranthia’s efforts to learn High Elvish (the languages bore nothing in common, but Ranthia finally was properly grasping just how different sentence construction could be between different languages), Ranthia’s understanding of the shimagu tongue was better than ever.

She was able to grasp the general gist of much of what she heard.

None of it was particularly helpful—and much of it was horrible—but it was somewhat novel to have such a breadth of comprehension.

And then, on the opposite side of her damaged stone tower, she finally found them—two targets that stood out like sore thumbs, in part because of how much distance the shimagu masses kept from them. A human woman somewhere in her forties, clad in vibrantly dyed robes and enough gaudy jewelry that it was practically a garish form of armor. A dullahan man—which raised serious questions about how in Xaoc’s glory a parasite managed to get inside of his natural armor—almost glowed with heat. The two stood a comfortable distance apart while they conversed in the shimagu tongue.

The woman was complaining. Ever since she was… small, her… something wouldn’t something about… Wait, that word she knew, it was the one the shimagu had used when they saw her. And the ‘Remus’ was in Creation.

…She was complaining that Ranthia had died so easily to her opening strike.

The dullahan’s voice had a decidedly metallic bent to it, as if he was speaking into an empty helmet. He accused the woman of whining or complaining or something—the word related to mood and speaking, given its roots. Then there was that word that Ranthia was increasingly convinced meant Sentinel and the word for block and negativity, which she assumed meant he was saying that there was no sign that she had blocked or evaded the attack. Another word purportedly meant ‘missing,’ so he was writing her off for dead.

Neither had noticed Ranthia quite yet, but she was definitely hesitating. They had to be the two twins that routed the Legion.

[Mage – Lightning] level 620, [Mage – Ash] level 542, [Mage – Gemstone] level 210 for the human woman.

[Mage – Lava] level 780, [Warrior – Lava] level 599, [Warrior – Inferno] level 486 for the dullahan man.

The elements and levels were already major problems, but only the gods knew what their parasites were capable of. They were both horrible matchups with elements that plainly countered her.

To attack was tantamount to suicide. But there was no one else that could do it. Neither of them was likely to be uniquely vulnerable to the other ‘high level’ classers in Remera. A useless piece of her mind was spinning strategies that involved her people from the Unbreakable Image, but even if Amphea could have stalled out the Lightning [Mage] that wasn’t doing Ranthia a single godsdamned bit of good!

Ranthia just hid nominally out of sight and tried to still her mind as she reached for her battle potions set. She just needed a plan. That was all. A great plan would somehow erase the tremendous disadvantage of fighting an equal and a higher-level opponent that both hard-countered her. There had to be something. There just had to—

The feel of liquid coating her hand brought her back to reality. Her hand was shaking so hard that she spilled some of the potion once the wax seal was broken. It felt incongruous. She didn’t shake like that, she never had. She was terrified when she fought the kraken or… no. That was a lie—her anger had overwhelmed everything back then. It had blinded her and led her to take stupid chances, but she had never really appreciated how much of a crutch it was too.

She would have almost preferred it.

Ranthia drank the potion, followed by the next. Tiny advantages that piled up. She reminded herself that she was making assumptions of her opponents—for all she knew their Skillsets were poorly balanced and didn’t properly counter her, same as her Mirror [Mage] class failed to counter Radiance. There was a real chance the woman had blown her entire mana pool on that opening strike.

And that was the crux of her plan—hope.

Panic spiral aside, Ranthia had never been one for convoluted strategies that were unlikely to survive the first move her opponents made. She was no master [Analyst] that could inexplicably predict the chaos of others; she set herself to simple directives and acted as the rhythm demanded. She just needed to do her best to kill the Lightning [Mage] with her opening attack, easy.

She had no concept of dullahan anatomy—it had never been covered when she was in the Ranger Academy. She couldn’t be confident in her ability to remove him in a single blow, but the Lightning [Mage] was a human. As horrible as it was, she was something of an expert at killing her own.

Hey Xaoc, watch this—it’ll either be great or terrible. …And hey, if I fail… I hope you’ll watch over Avyna for me in my stead, at least until she’s safe again.

Xaoc’s response felt like a nudge, a push to stop wavering and act. Which was fair—cowering behind a rock was about as far from chaotic as she had ever been. The mana Xaoc took was seamlessly replaced by her mana regeneration nearly immediately, and Ranthia took that instant as her prompt.

She threw an image behind the duo, seemingly unnoticed. And the moment her shift concluded, she drove her fully empowered adamantium knife straight for the back of the woman’s head. It was a perfect strike, poised to pierce the brain and carve down to the parasite. Her strength was sufficient to pierce the skull of a [Mage], but the invisible edge of Void that coated the adamantium would make the kill instant.

And then sixteen tendrils of Ooze intercepted her attack. The greenish gunk formed a buffer between her blade and the woman’s head, even as the thorns that tipped the tendrils wrapped around Ranthia’s arm and punctured exposed skin. Her lethal attack was reduced to the shallowest possible cut—thanks solely to [Echoes of Devastation] extending the blow through the surprisingly resilient Ooze—that did more to mess up her impractically long hair than it did to damage her skin.

Her other knife cleaved through the tendrils as Ranthia pulled away with an angry snarl. The woman hadn’t bothered to turn to face her yet, but her arm was already burning in pain—with dark discolorations spreading across her skin. Ranthia retreated back to the body she had just abandoned.

“Poison, of course.” Ranthia muttered as she stepped into view, shaking the lingering discomfort out of her arm.

The woman and the dullahan turned to face her, before said woman began to speak to him—she was asking if Ranthia was the same Sentinel and, if Ranthia understood her correctly, was commenting that all humans looked the same to her. The human woman thought all humans looked the same. The dullahan seemed to confirm that she was, but Ranthia couldn’t follow what he added after—none of the essential words were familiar.

The woman smiled at Ranthia while her ooze-tendrils splayed out around her—the effect was eerily reminiscent of a flamboyant bird trying to attract a mate with its vibrant plumage. Facing them directly was not the plan, but it wasn’t like Ranthia had any better ideas. She just needed to learn what they could do and adapt, same as with the troll and—

[Combat Awareness]’s warnings basically felt like instinct after so long. She felt a need to move, she threw herself to the side, even as she began to spread images out throughout the area. A moment or so later, another powerful bolt of Lightning tore through the sky and struck the place she had been. Remarkably, despite the proximity, the blast didn’t arc to her, it just peppered her with flecks of molten rock—a minor detail, at least comparatively.

Twice more, the infested woman called Lightning from the clouds above. Ranthia started the process to shift immediately, and it concluded a heartbeat before her the second bolt obliterated the body she had narrowly escaped.

Gratingly, the two continued to just… casually converse while Ranthia struggled. The woman seemed to be having fun and was praising Ranthia, but the dullahan was plainly unimpressed with her performance. Which… gratingly, was fair; Ranthia had done nothing but defend thus far.

But the attacks paused and Ranthia didn’t wait to see what came next. As one, she and her remaining images began to dance, even as more appeared around the twins. The duo seemed to be momentarily thrown off by the change.

Which meant they were vulnerable. The swarm of Ranthia went on the attack, closing in with chaotic, graceful movements. Then, once the first images reached the pair, the knives came out. A barrier of Ash erupted from the woman—which forced the dullahan to lunge away from her, though he drew a massive single-edged sword from his back in midair and began to attack the images within his impressive reach.

But they were just images, they shattered beneath the force of his strike, even as the woman’s pyroclastic barrier destroyed every image that touched it. The true Ranthia watched and adapted—she switched targets. A pivot and a twirl brought her in range of the dullahan, even as her opponents continued to chat (the woman was impressed, he wasn’t—she recognized “<Weak>” easily, it was one of the first bits of the shimagu tongue she learned). The dullahan’s sword shattered an image and met her true knife. Void-kissed adamantium bit into vitality-reinforced steel, but her blade deflected off—much like when she had faced the troll. She damaged the sword, but, given its scale, it was scarcely more than a nick—she would have to do a lot better than that to disarm him.

Still, he seemed surprised. He stepped clear of her with broad, confident strides even as he verbally mused that she might not be as weak as he expected—then there was something about… distance? The woman urged him to move further away and said that she didn’t want… godsdamnit multiple languages were annoying. The two bickered briefly, but the dullahan continued to move and Ranthia couldn’t even be certain which opponent she was supposed to be leery of!

She felt ready to scream. Having her opponents just… continue to casually chat while she fought them grated on her more than she would have expected. Deep down, she knew it was better that they underestimated her and weren’t using their full strength, but… Still, she had enough wisdom to keep her mouth firmly shut. They had no idea that she could… kind of understand them, which gave her a possible edge—and maybe an opportunity if she was crafty enough.

But for the moment, she needed to choose which opponent to stick close to, and she had confirmed that the dullahan would be an endurance battle. Which was fair enough, she had another defense to test. Still, Ranthia followed him for the moment while she prepared to shift. A false stumble on the frozen terrain didn’t go unnoticed. The dullahan committed to a strike meant to bisect her.

And she replaced an image a heartbeat before the Ash barrier could destroy it. Adamantium and Void tore a massive rent through the Ash, but it closed before she could capitalize on it—which was fine, that meant with greater speed, she could kill the woman. Even better, she didn’t seem to even notice the near incident, the infested idiot was focused on the dullahan.

And then she spoke again, there was a permissive root behind her words, but something about distance too, perhaps? Not that it stayed a mystery for long. The damned dullahan erupted like a volcano made of metal-coated flesh. Plumes of Lava shot outward around him—erasing all traces of every image in a solid vicinity of him—and stood there as the ground around him glowed and melted.

At least the shimagu woman plainly underestimated his range—she screeched, a universal sound of panic, as she stumbled away from him. Blobs of Lava clashed against the Ash of her shield, but the molten slag flew slow enough that it was trivial for Ranthia to dance around them.

It brutalized the population of her images though, even as the temperature spiked. The bitter chill fled the area as rocks shattered from the sudden shift. The dullahan began to walk toward the images that were just out of his range, the eruption of Lava moving with him. Each time one broke, his gaze found the next and his leisurely stroll continued.

Ranthia had few other moves. She threw more images out as she reassessed the situation. The woman’s Lightning, contrary to her expectations, wasn’t too big of a threat. It built up in the clouds before it descended and, somehow, she was able to sense that enough for [Combat Awareness] to save her ass. It didn’t fork or arc like she would have expected, it was just like a spear from the heavens that obliterated whatever was below. Her parasite’s Poison tendrils of Ooze weren’t immediately lethal, which meant that Ranthia could all but ignore them—so long as she didn’t get careless. The Ash shield was a larger problem—it was likely mana efficient and Ranthia knew she had seen the glow of arcanite amongst the woman’s excessive jewelry. Bands of silver, copper, and gold covered much of her body and gemstones or arcanite were embedded in most of it—which made her Gemstones class all the more ominous.

Still, she was convinced that a big attack could pierce through the woman’s shield, not that she had such an attack. But her opponents plainly had no idea what she was capable of, despite the troll spending years training himself against her. There were opportunities there, plus she was still confident that she could tear through the Ash with enough speed and focus.

The dullahan was more immediately dangerous. The heat that assailed her was already climbing high enough that sweat was proving to be a problem—her images didn’t sweat, and she had no idea how to make them do it. It wasn’t something she had ever concerned herself with; she was too used to being able to renew her physical state at will. The dullahan was slow, but he was undeniably powerful. His strength just might be greater than the troll’s had been, and the Lava was an obstacle that she lacked a clean answer to. Worse, she was pretty sure that—like the woman—she hadn’t seen what one of his classes did, unless his Inferno class was dedicated solely to managing his own heat. Unlike her though, he hadn’t shown anything of his parasite’s Skills.

Fine, it sucked, but she had her answer. Ranthia pulled from her armor’s arcanite and tapped [Reflections of Reality], she just needed to keep the woman between herself and the dullahan hotspot while she found a way through her defenses. All she needed was momentum.

[Combat Awareness] screamed an instant before her shift concluded.

It wasn’t an ideal pick anymore, had she more time she would have aborted the process and chosen another. Poison tendrils were launching out of the Ash barrier and one of them bit into her leg before she could dodge it—but it still fared better than the image she had just abandoned. The winged ogre growled as he pulled his stone club free of the ground.

“” He grumbled, one of the first things that any of them had said that Ranthia was pretty certain of every word—and how their interactions worked.

Not that she could appreciate the novelty, a single thought seemed to swirl through her mind.

Three twins.

It was absurd. No one had a firm count of how many twins the shimagu had, but there were increasing whispers that there were more Coalition elites than there were twins—yet they saw fit to send three just to kill her?! But there was no time to dwell in her outrage or panic.

Ranthia concluded her shift to an uninjured image—one of the precious few that was left, she had lost almost all of them in the moments she was distracted. She couldn’t panic; she just had to accept the situation as it was.

She just had to accept that she wasn’t going to survive.

But hey, if hope was denied, she was old friends with revenge. She preemptively welcomed it back into her heart and mind, and her plans pivoted. She couldn’t win, but she could carry them kicking and screaming to Black Crow alongside her.

The too-familiar cold venom of hatred flowed through her veins as Ranthia roared back into action. Images bought her time, even if [Submind] was taxed beyond its limits managing images that were broken and replaced in rapid succession. It made her unoccupied images sloppy, as if her opponents couldn’t readily tell that the sweat-soaked body was truly her. There was nothing else she could do about that, so she refused to worry about it.

She had already assessed how to kill the woman, so she set herself to it. Her dance carried her to the ball of spinning Ash that her target occupied. One blade culled the tendril that came at her, even as she spun and built the momentum for a grander strike with its counterpart. Void consumed a swath of Ash, and the force of the strike dispersed more—exposing the woman within for a precious heartbeat or two.

Plenty of time to come around again and release the knife with lethal momentum. [Sustained Chaos] carried [Void Edge] and [Echoes of the Void], while [Adamant Commander] imparted greater force than her momentum and her strength could ever hope to achieve. Hitting the center of mass wasn’t ideal when dealing with a twin, but she could kill the host and find a way to make sure the parasite died—the certainty of a single kill mattered more than trying to be perfect.

A dazzling burst of color—one bright enough that it might have blinded lesser eyes—erupted from the countless tiny gaps in her defenses, and the woman shrieked a heartbeat later.

But in the final instant Ranthia could see inside, before the barrier sealed the wound she had inflicted, her knife dropped after it was stopped by layered defenses.

Naturally, the woman kept fucking chattering once she was done screaming. “<That,>” some curse or another, “<just made me use four of my>,” oh look, the word for gems, probably. That would have been neat, had Ranthia learned it at some earlier stage of her life. Instead, she didn’t even bother to try to memorize it.

Xaoc take skill gems, first they were denied to her, then they denied her a rightful kill?! Godsdamnit all. The winged ogre was already inbound—unsurprising, she had more-or-less stayed still for a few heartbeats.

He swung his club down at her and, instead of shifting away, Ranthia met it with her [Void Edge]-enhanced blades. Stone never even got to meet adamantium, it ablated from her Skills, even as she danced clear and lashed out with a snap kick.

The impact didn’t seem to hurt him much, instead her foot hurt. The winged ogre—still airborn—barely even moved, but Ranthia was forced to activate [Reflections of Reality] again. The brief pause in creating images was costing her, her safe harbors narrowed in the moments it took to shift.

She only narrowly completed the shift before the winged ogre crushed the image she had abandoned.

Being down a knife would have been a problem before, but Ranthia had more adamantium bonded than she possessed during her days at the Unbreakable Image. She lowered her empty hand to her belt and called the dormant sand to form a replacement blade—her third knife.

The dullahan was shouting something—orders, by the tone; not that she understood any useful words in what he said. If he was able to give the other two orders, she needed to prioritize him.

Ranthia danced away from another blast of Lightning as she tried to form a plan. She had no idea if she had enough vitality to survive the Lava for long enough for her knife to reach him—even from so far away the heat felt as if it would sear her skin.

Avyna. The thought felt like it came from nowhere—as if some distant piece of her more rational self had finally escaped its bonds to whisper the name into her very soul—but it still brought Ranthia up short.

Which gave the winged asshole just enough time to reach her. Ranthia was still flatfooted by the revelation that she had almost willingly thrown her life away and her knives were out of position. The only thing she could do was throw herself backwards while she raised her arm to take the strike. His stone club crashed into her flesh with brutish force, but Ranthia hit the ground and flipped back onto her feet.

Her arm was bruised, but it hadn’t broken. [Adamant Commander] brought her knives back into her grasp, even as she lunged at him. Her opponent fled into the sky, out of her nominal reach. But rather than pursuing him, Ranthia returned to her dance and refocused on creating images—the trio were able to destroy them at a worrying rate.

Love and determination chased the fog of revenge—and the helpless terror that had birthed it—from her mind. She rushed to review the situation again, even as she felt another Lightning bolt forming above her. It necessitated another shift—and she needed to pull more mana once it was done.

The dullahan’s Lava had to be a mana sink—she refused to believe he could conjure or add so much heat to that much material indefinitely. She had no real insight into the Lightning bolts’ possible costs, but the Ash shield was probably mana efficient—unless she could keep deleting material from it. The winged ogre presumably hadn’t even used much mana, but she had never even seen him attempt a prolonged fight—he was a wildcard.

The shift concluded and Ranthia pulled from her arcanite stores. The dullahan… turned away from her when he saw her do it and approached one of her unoccupied images instead. What…?

Her opponents weren’t stupid—foolish, perhaps, but not stupid. They were dissecting her Skillset, the same as she worked to figure theirs out.

She couldn’t be confident who could hold out longer in a defensive battle—her [Covenant] made her far more mana efficient than she should have been, but she was only mostly confident she could outlast the dullahan. Still, it felt like her best chance. Especially since she hadn’t even touched the fused chunks of arcanite in her belt pouches—each of which held far more mana than her armor did.

Ranthia’s dance adapted. She and her images spread out further and [Ideal Reflectance] ceased to copy her Skills—an image’s [Void Edge]-infused strike was just too weak to properly threaten her opponents. She focused on conserving her mana and preserving herself, as she watched her opponents and tried to bait them into reckless expenditures.

As important as the rest of the battle that raged around her was, she had no room to pay a single whit of attention to it. [Submind] needed every bit of extra focus she could give it, to keep her images dancing and to make them harder to break.

Especially because all three of her opponents had suddenly focused on destroying them. The dullahan stopped spouting orders after they did, which answered what he had wanted from them.

The dullhan’s pace was glacial, the winged ogre’s was frenzied, and the woman fell somewhere in between. But, as a trio, the three were damned effective at breaking her images. Lava flowed and splashed over them. The club crashed through images and shattered stone into perforating sprays that made his devastation almost as widespread as the dullahan’s. The woman kept her Lightning focused on the body Ranthia occupied—proving that at least she had learned how to spot the true Ranthia—while Poison-tipped tendrils of ooze snapped around her like gooey serpents, eager to bite into her images.

And through it all, Ranthia danced. [Rhythmic Grace] carried her around their attacks and [True Grace] kept her at her best. But her best wasn’t enough; she was losing the battle of attrition. Even with her best efforts, her opponents were able to destroy her images just a bit faster than she could replace them.

And every time she used [Reflections of Reality], her options collapsed. Which meant she had to dance better. She pushed her body for every bit of speed, anything to keep her ahead of the irregular attacks that came her way. Every time she had to shift, not only did it cost her images, but it also put her in danger of shifting into an image that was under attack.

Time and time again, Ranthia was forced to roll the dice.

But she had to persevere. If at least one of them ran out of mana, she had a chance.

It wasn’t a stalemate in any sense of the word, even if no true damage was being inflicted by any participant in the battle. Her opponents seemed to be growing cocky that she couldn’t attack, but there was no way to capitalize on it. After all, they were right.

She couldn’t allow herself the smallest distraction as she and her images danced for survival. Her mana was fine, but her margin of safety narrowed as the farce dragged on. No matter what she tried, the number of images she could keep active continued to diminish.

Distance didn’t help her. Lightning found even those that she sent to the edge of her range, and she had no idea how the damned woman even knew where they were. Too much was unknown; a single brief battle only provided insight into the obvious, but the details were going to kill her.

She had enough battlefield awareness to know that her opponents were driving her toward the walls of Remera. It would limit her movements even further if they got there, but it was just as possible that the base’s defenses might turn the situation around for her. She wasn’t so stupid that she refused to involve others—no legionary or dwarf was ignorant of what war meant.

A new conversation sprang up between the three. She couldn’t follow most of what they said, but the bit of context she could make sense of was clear enough: they were arguing about who would kill her. …And somehow this resulted in the winged ogre making a disgusting mockery of a lecherous grin at the woman.

The enthusiastic moan that came from the woman in response was entirely too much. Ranthia was running out of time—she was barely able to keep six images active at a time anymore—and her opponents were flirting?! Not that outrage was doing her any good, it was becoming increasingly obvious that her gambit had failed.

It was hard to find the space to properly think. She had to do something, but what? Rushing for the wall felt like her only option, but—

What was that? There was a glint in the distance, and it seemed to be focused on her position.

Had she been more rational, she would have written it off—the smart bet was that it was nothing. The next most likely option was that it was some sort of shimagu plot or attack. But Ranthia was so focused that she hadn’t even noticed the familiar headache she got back when she manually controlled her images for too long or tried to do too much. She was so desperate that she decided it was a signal.

“<Instead of him, why don’t we have some fun?>” It was horrendously difficult to infuse a glib tone into the guttural sounds of the shimagu language. Her throat was sore enough after that she had to suppress the urge to cough, and yes, she was only mostly sure the sentence made sense.

But it made the three freeze up for an instant, and Ranthia wasted no time capitalizing on it—she lunged straight at the woman she had mockingly propositioned. She danced around the globe of Ash and unleashed a rapid barrage of cuts. Her goal was simple—she needed to erase as much Ash as she could with [Void Edge] and [Echoes of Devastation]. She had to strip away the woman’s protection. She had to—

There was no warning, even [Combat Awareness] stayed silent. A flash of indescribable light, then it felt like a Lightning-infused shockwave slammed into her. Her muscles spasmed and seized, even as her flesh and armor sizzled. It didn’t even hurt; it felt like every possible feeling all at once raced through her body and cancelled itself out into just… noise.

But that attack blew away the last of the woman’s defenses.

And a heartbeat later, the air cracked. The woman’s lovely head disappeared into a crimson bloom, just before some grand impact slammed into Ranthia’s shoulder and sent her spinning. Ranthia struck the ground and bounced as she tried to focus on [Reflections of Reality].

[*ding!* Your allies have slain a human [Electrifying Elegance] (Lightning, level 622), [Ashen Asylum] (Ash, level 546), [All That Glitters] (Gemstones, level 216)//a shimagu [Honeyed Words] (Ooze, level 587), [Venomous Barbs] (Poison, level 561), [Mending Touch] (Light, level 349)!]

In a fresh body, the notification was one of the most beautiful things she had ever seen. Not that she missed that the winged ogre was closing in on her. With a hateful snarl, he tried to bring his club down on her.

There wasn’t even enough time to activate a Skill, but Ranthia met stone with adamantium and twirled sideways. And tried not to dwell on the fact she felt the club slide through her hair as it passed harmlessly behind her. Gods and goddesses, that had been entirely too close.

The dullahan was looking for the new threat, but the winged ogre seemed to be especially determined to kill her. She wasn’t even sure if she had any other images up—she couldn’t let him injure her too badly. He swung again, as if he hoped to bisect her with a chunk of rock.

Ranthia dropped down and sprang forward. It wasn’t an instantly fatal blow, but her opponent had practically given her a gilded invitation. So, she stabbed him in the kidney with a Void-kissed knife.

The ogre howled and drove her back with powerful beats of his wings—and likely a Gale or Wind Skill—but he never even noticed the image that she threw to the side. Segments of her armor failed before she could escape, but the shift freed Ranthia from his onslaught. [Adamant Commander] tore her knife out of his side and the ogre snarled as he grabbed for his bleeding wound, wobbling higher into the air as he did.

Which—frustratingly—probably saved his life. A second crack echoed and meat exploded from the winged ogre’s thigh.

…Into Ranthia’s hair. Ugh! She knew that she—wait, she had worn a helmet, when in Xaoc’s glory had she lost it?!

The winged ogre was hurriedly flying higher into the sky to escape, which was the only reason she allowed herself a moment of distraction before she turned to face the dullahan.

“Well, that changed quickly.” Her final opponent muttered in accented Creation.

“I can’t complain.” Ranthia answered in good humor. At that point she wasn’t even surprised he spoke her language, same as she did his (sort of). Instead, she let a savage grin split her face as she approached him. Each step felt like she was approaching a forge of improbable power, but she wasn’t about to let heat stop her from killing her last adversary.

“Oh, you will still die.” The dullahan’s tone was hard to read beneath the accent and the metallic twang.

Her opponent stepped forward and cleaved his sword down at her—eerily reminiscent of the favored overhead strikes the winged ogre kept performing. Ranthia didn’t even hesitate. His blade warped the air around it with a haze of heat, yet Ranthia trusted [Higher Power]. He might be stronger than the troll was, but she had learned the Skill’s value. She caught his blade between her knives. [Void Edge] and [Echoes of Devastation] activated an instant before impact.

Her left wrist and palm broke.

But his thermally abused sword failed too. As she pivoted and cleaved through it with her right knife, the upper third of the blade flew past her. Where it smashed into Remera’s walls—oops. Her opponent staggered at the unexpected outcome.

She wasn’t one to miss an opportunity. Her right hand was still good, so she drove her knife into the Lava that surged around him, straight for his neck.

It didn’t even hurt as badly as she expected, but her strike failed. The dullahan’s eyes widened and he stumbled back, but Ranthia’s arm just… came undone. Her flesh cooked and ablated away, and the knife slipped from her grip, straight into the molten rock around his feet.

Ranthia could only curse as she hurriedly shifted to a nearby image while her opponent recovered. Her momentary advantage had been erased, but at least she hadn’t paid a permanent price for her failure. [Adamant Commander] even plucked her knife from the Lava and pulled it back to her hand.

Curses spilled off her tongue as she hurriedly released the blade. Segments of skin peeled off her scalded hand and followed the blade as it descended from her grasp. The metal wasn’t glowing or anything—it looked just fine—but it was hot.

Fortunately, with the woman and her parasite quite dead, Ranthia was finally able to call her first knife back from the scattered ashes around her feet. She had been dragging it around until her timely demise, but that blade wasn’t anywhere near as heated as the first. Her damaged hand hurt, but it moved as she needed it to—she could endure mere pain.

Another crack rang out. A plume of lava scattered into globules that splattered across the dullahan’s armored body, but nothing else seemed to happen. He was still ignoring it all as he eyed his ruined sword.

She couldn’t read the expression on his face—especially not through the lava that raged around him—but she imagined it displayed some flavor of displeasure.

“Next time then.” The dullahan finally announced, before Ranthia could come up with a viable attack—[Sustained Chaos] was going to be the crux of her next attack, but she needed slightly more of a plan than “throw knife.”

[Combat Awareness] went positively nuts. Ranthia began to dance away from the dullahan, and the ground trembled after her second step. It was as if Pallos itself began to rage beneath her feet.

A full, broad geyser of Lava erupted beneath the dullahan. Liquid death scattered everywhere, forcing Ranthia to shift to an image she threw atop Remera’s walls. She and the other defenders hurriedly leapt off, into the base, even as the walls began to smoke and sizzle from the proximity to so much Lava.

As unlikely as it sounded, the geyser moved and carried her adversary away—not that she could watch. She and the other defenders were busy trying to beat back the flames that erupted on nearby tents.

“Grace!”

Ranthia blinked at the call from the other side of the damaged wall. It was unexpected, but it didn’t take her long to ascend once again.

Sentinel Mirage was limping closer, supported by a woman in tattered Legion armor. The woman was almost as severely wounded as he was—though at least she had both legs. Mirage’s left leg ended shortly below his knee, and he had a leather cord wrapped tight just beneath his armor’s skirt to try to help stop the flow of blood.

“I hit you, didn’t I? Damn it, I knew I should have waited a hair before I took that shot. Want the kill credit to make up for it?” He called up with an easy grin on his face.

That was impressive unflappability. Or, quite possibly, delirium from blood loss. Ranthia sent an image down in front of him and shifted to it.

“Nah, it’s all yours—you saved my ass.” She answered upon arrival, before she walked over to her abandoned, superheated knife.

Still too hot to touch. She broke it down to sand—careful to not actually touch any of it—and used her Skills to spread the sand out.

If adamantium didn’t want to cool off, she had a major problem she needed to solve.

“Appreciated. But, uh, once you’re done playing around, maybe between the two of you I can get a boost over the wall? That entrance of yours didn’t look like it was going to open any time soon.” Mirage asked, as if the wall wasn’t higher than she could ever hope to throw the man—even with his weight reduced by half a leg.

Ranthia eyed him.

“What, my arms are good, right Octavia?” He looked to the silent woman, but she just answered him with a grunt. “See, she agrees with me.”

For all Mirage’s jokes, Ranthia went back for a rope ladder as soon as her adamantium was cool enough that it wouldn’t burn through a leather pouch. Between the two of them—and some additional help from the legionaries that were supposed to be posted to that section of the wall—they managed to get the injured Sentinel inside Remera.

The crisis was far from over, but Remera was still standing—okay, a significant majority of Remera was still standing—and that had to be good enough for the moment.