"Come on now... Come on...!" I chitter away, fiddling with the machine as I run back and forth to make sure everything's safe and secure. That is most certainly osibindah magic I saw in the observatory's looking glass. That most certainly is an earth shaman, and it's wrecking the place up.
I hop back to the machine and smack it about, finishing the final touches as I count my blessings. Switches flip up, and my limited gear works, and electronics thunk and buzz. My most focussed claw tip hovers over the activation button, an empty mess filling my head. This is going to be dangerous.
Very dangerous, and if I don't...
"Ah, screw it." I go, already cocky from surviving death twice. No technicalities or meaningless details of 'resurrection' will come in my way. I survived twice, and I'll survive again!
The button clicks and the pipes rumble, vomiting out pure arcane power. Rushing in front of the machine, I construct additional machinery with my own magic. It funnels it right against me, saturating my already weary and worn body. The power burns, like a hot bath at first until I'm too numbed to feel it proper.
But... The moment it hits my nostrils and my mouth, it tears open a whole new world of pain. I grumble and howl, letting the power fill me out as my heart joins in on the fun. It pushes all the magic it can throughout my body, filling me up way too quickly with how much is coming my way. It stuffs me, stuffs me stiff, and it cripples me.
Yet, for all the pain and locking up of my body, I stay standing. I stay upright with a clenched jaw and tensed up, curled muscles. My body can't decide how it wants to focus it and all I can do is detach my mind from my imprisoned body. Everything is flashing about my head, every bit of information I need to survive.
All the techniques I learned reaching Suhurlodst. What that damn school itself taught me. The villains I've had to fight in my time there and the monsters I've slain. All the way to all that magic bloating my body to burst when I defeated Atarifuge.
Muscle memory certainly helps, but this needs way too much active concentration. Everything feels like it's ready to slip. Ready to break. I won't let it, I won't let any of it happen.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" I roar with all I have, choking on the wind-rich magic as it tries to drown me with all that power. My body understands this kind of power, it knows how to process it. But it's still a shitload of pain! Gods above, why is there so much pain if I know how to handle this kind of power!?
Never mind that, never mind that! Bugger! Shit! I want to die again! Let me die again!
"GODS DAMMIT!" I howl, suddenly moving into a crouch and leaping away from the machine. The winds howl, not that I can see anything. A fireball trails after me, around me, ahead in every sense of the word. I can't see how far I'm going or where I'm going to land. All I can do is try and let my instincts win out...
No ground yet...
No ground yet...
No ground yet?
No ground yet...
Did it always take this long to-
The earth erupts around me, and my legs bend into the motion. I keep sinking and sinking until I reach an unbreakable surface. It holds me still, and I force my way into another leap, rushing out of the dissipating fireball as my magic finally gets itself under control. My legs slow down, bringing me out of a run and into a jog and then a walk.
I come to a stop, looking about my still thankfully clothed person. My eyes shift about, locking onto the signs of a foreign magic power. I twist about to look at where I've come from, an eternal torch still flowing there. A shower of rubble barely managing to stay where it is.
"Not paying for that." I mutter, not wanting to even think about the price tag.
Any humour in me drains away, and my eyes narrow at the approaching figure. This is the earth shaman alright, and he's coming for me. Yet, with each jostle and buckle of the stone worms, a detail becomes clear. That oil-on-water shaded brown carapace is broken apart by oranges and greys. Iron.
"Talk about a reunion..." I mutter, somehow finding one last quip as old memories flash before me. I crawled out of a hive run to its peak of brutal efficiency. The one it was in charge of. This is the one that had me enslaved in the pits, fighting my turned countrymen for nothing more than cruelty itself.
I am not the man I was when I struggled to free myself. I am something far greater and more. I'm not in the best of situations right now, I know that much. Even with all that pain, lingering and past, I'm still not where I was. Still, it's more than enough to relive the glory days of what it's like to have magic in my system!
"COME ON THEN YOU LIFE-STEALING, SHITSTAIN BUG!" I howl, rushing for the monster as I delight myself on the opportunity to get vengeance for a me of a prior life. Those stone worms come to meet me, and I hear the bug cackle away on the rushing wind. It barrels for me, and I vault up and over.
Each step shatters rock, and I find my footing in the cracks even as it weaves weapons around for me. I dodge through the growing net, rearing a fist back and striking where I need to. The mountains will never forgive me for such brutality on their slate-strong cousins. I tear my way into the open, watching the earth shaman as he rises away on the platform.
A smirk comes to my lips, the terror of what happened when I was escaping that hive with Vapooliar is no longer in me. It's nowhere to be seen at all. Not one bit of rock is a threat to me and my body is far too nimble to be caught. I slip, smash and vault my way through more and more attacks. Climbing them when I need to and throwing myself away when needed.
My kick breaks the spine of a stone worm, and I leap right through another. The growing mess of rock coiling up from all over the farms and villages. Already ruined houses tremble, coming apart rock by rock and sharpening themselves into spears and arrows. Fingers and palms whack them all away, and what debris does manage to sneak in is dulled under the pressure of my aura.
I strike the ground with killing intent, blowing away the fields and exposing the underside of the mountain kingdom. A clear black view with sparkles of blue and other raw magic stuff. Nowhere is there room for the bug to call on his resources, his power. It all needs to come from elsewhere, and each strike only sends it further back.
I trap bountiful loads of magic in fragile shells, cascading the land into an uninhabitable hellscape of flash fires. Whoever might be around here is not going to survive, but, frankly, with a monster like this near. Only an idiot would be here. Not me, though, I'm quite the genius!
"I AM HERE FOR YOU! HERE FOR YOU! MY FINAL ACT FOR MY HIVE! HAHAHA!" the Earth Shaman howls away, cackling so evilly as a huff breaks my lips. My, my, my... He's holding a grudge towards me for escaping his horrid hive? Sorry, never more not sorry in my life.
"HERE I AM, BUG!" I howl right back, spinning my way through two more of his attacks. Magic flaring up in my claws. Each blow leaves less and less flash fires. Each strike is soaking the air so much it simply cannot react that way anymore. Good or bad, it's no matter to me at all. I can fight him with just my fists if I need to!
A lone blade flies into the battlefield. A greatsword of emerald-tinted design and absolutely gaudy decorations. My eyes twitch, following the weak trail, right back to the source. Morgihranur.
The sword doesn't make its way to the bug, but it's enough to captivate his attention just a tiny bit.
"YOU WOULD'VE MADE A WONDERFUL QUEEN FOR THE HIVE THAT NEVER WAS!" the Earth Shaman declares, the grotesque image of what I saw near Vadei's home village flashing before my eyes. That feeling of having something invade my head with a hundred crying voices all mutating into a single thing. A cold rush goes through my blood even as I move with such fiery effort.
"AND SHE NEVER WILL BE!" I answer right back, spitting on the foul memory coming to mind. I barrel through the stone worms and latch right onto the Earth Shaman, tearing his vile armour away from his body. I can't get his staff, and he casts me right away. My muscles tense and break the rock, shattering it with a tremendous explosion.
I barely hit the ground, and it's all coming back for me. A thousand snakes with slithering spearheads and more. I run, I run as fast as I can, going through more and more of the of the returning rock. Latching right back onto my prize.
I waste no time in glorifying what I have, and I snatch its staff right away. Throwing it as far as the eye can see and all the way to the fake horizon. A slight bit of rain comes about, brown to the point of being black in the distance. All that cockiness on the Earth Shaman vanishes, whatever confidence he brought with him is gone.
He's the same as he was then, useless without a staff. His magic is barely able to work without it. And we're too far from any proper rock for him to work with. I get up, bringing him with me and I hoist him right up, his body surprisingly limp for one that is about to die.
"Oh... How you could have succeeded me, Nin," he says, bringing me to a complete halt.
"Do not ever say my name again." I threaten pointlessly, knowing full well he's going to die regardless. Though, I have to admit, much as I want to do it myself... I also need to check on Morgihranur quickly. And, who knows, maybe she'd enjoy getting all of her fury out on this beaten foe. This monster in every shape and form.
"You are the one who escaped my grasp, you ruined one of my favourite hives. Brought so much hope to my life then, and so many ideas now. But I suppose it is fair to die like this. Die as all osibindah do when their hives are gone." he chitters, what sounds like the barest of tears edging their way to his eyes. Yet, when I bring him more eye level, I see nothing at all. Nothing in those wasteful, hexagonal fields. A sickly yellow I am sick and tired of in every capacity.
"Spend more time being prepared to die." I tell it, digging my claws in tight to his seething body. We leap the distance, landing right by Morgihranur as she seems to struggle to do anything.
"Nin... You made it..." she whimpers, somehow barely managing to get complete words out with no trip-ups or other struggles. Her blade limps its way back to her, a broken, cracked mess of a blade.
It enters her grip, and she hobbles up, throwing away the grandiosity of an execution for a quick thrust to the back of the head. The bug dies, and I let his body drop to the ground as she collapses against me. She's struggling. She's struggling to even live at this point.
"I... I want my father... I want a warm bed... I don't want to be here anymore..." she cries, sniffling as she no doubt feels her death coming closer. I smile beneath my mask and let my magic flow from me as I sit us down as carefully as I can. The mess of a corpse no bother at all.
"I can't give you any of that, Your Majesty. But, this humble doctor can help you otherwise." I tell her, playing into the dreamscape of this now-ruined underground kingdom. She weakly coughs up a laugh, clinging to me tightly as I soothe her with gentle strokes and the like. Bit by bit, wound by wound. Every laceration, cut, puncture and chunk the rocks have taken out of her.
It all heals up and more.