A tear rolled down my eye as the surge of conflicting emotions cascaded through my consciousness through the shared link. I was so overwhelmed by the juxtaposed sensations that all I could do was let it pass through me. Drache's mental state was in such chaotic flux that it was impossible to tell if she felt any one way about confronting the apparition of her mother. Even the anger I felt, which I had assumed would be the strongest emotion amongst the lot, had to fight to rise above a myriad of other feelings. Doubt gave way to hate, which was swallowed up by fear, and then consumed by determination.
The untainted blade of the Hand of the Usurper shimmered in her hand. Without the malice that had accumulated in it over the War of the Five Kings, it looked like any other dagger. Its blade was sharp and of simple design, albeit with a silvery gleam that hinted at its divine power. The way she held it conveyed that she'd had plenty of practice wielding it, her bent wrist angling the blade vaguely in Evros' direction.
Deotra and I moved forward slightly to stand just behind Drache. "You know, your mother has really let herself go. Must be all that dark, otherworldly magic she's wielding. It's gotta be murder on her skin." Drache might've smirked, but I couldn't see her face. I could hear her amusement in her voice though.
"This is merely how I see her. She had plenty of time to let her soul rot, even before she was corrupted by the Imbalancer."
Evros' malformed head tilted, the vertebrae creaking loudly as her jaw moved to form words. "Of course you would blame me and only me for all of this. Just like when you were a child, all you could do was cling to my leg and whine as I dragged you around. Never once did you appreciate how hard I had to work to raise you while I carried a kingdom on my shoulders." The various ornaments on her waist sash glowed ominously, a surge of power flowed out of them and into her scepter.
There was barely enough time to react. Muscling my way around Drache, I pointed the Staff of Farewells at Evros just in time to conjure a shield. The swirling blue lens of defensive energy blazed into being just as Evros launched her attack. A hissing red beam of concentrated light shot out of the head of the scepter, impacting the shield head on. Fragments of sizzling crimson magic splayed across the angled surface, obscuring my vision. The shield held long enough for Evros to tire of her ineffective attack, though. When the beam disappeared, I took in a deep breath, my lungs welcomed the fresh air.
Evros was not so pleased. "And now you have to cower behind these peons, daughter of mine. Do I frighten you so much that even now you cannot face me alone?" Her skeletal jaw worked to simulate a smile, failing miserably. Her burning eyes fixated on the Hand of the Usurper. "That damnable thing. You undid everything I ever accomplished with that once. I would've thought by now you'd have thrown it away. Or perhaps you are more like me than you care to admit?" She cackled, the sound rattling the teeth in her mouth. "Maybe the lure of power will make you wander off into the dark like your dear old mother, hmm?"
I was at Drache's right flank, now slightly ahead of her thanks to my defensive spell. Sensing a flicker of doubt in our psychic link, I turned my head to address her when I saw something chilling. Her fingers, tightly gripping the hilt of the Hand, were decaying at a rapid rate. The skin was turning black with necrosis, swollen veins bulging all along the lengths of her hand. To my horror, they were slowly making their way up her arm, spreading the rot with them.
Drache made eye contact with me, and her expression flickered for a second. There was something in the way her eyes wavered, almost as if she now acutely aware that I was seeing her in a different light, but I couldn't even begin to guess at what she was thinking, even with our connection. Whatever thought she had in that moment was buried beneath the current of our overlapping emotions. What was clear was that she could see my concern for her condition clear as day on my face.
Then her expression was resolute as iron and fire yet again. "I was never afraid of power, whether wielding or pursuing it. Nor did I fear what the consequences of using it would be." Burning air wreathed itself around her arm, twisting like a snake, searing the affliction, and stopping its progress as though she were cauterizing a wound. Curling around the blade, the fire came to rest like a coiled viper waiting to strike.
"No, you were always afraid that power would turn you into me!" Evros lunged forward. Her left arm swept around with blinding speed, fingers extended like bony talons aimed at Drache's throat. An inhuman howl escaped her mouth as she dove at her daughter with a killing blow, but if she was fast then Drache was faster.
Pushing me away, I tumbled off to my right just in time for the wide arc of Evros' swing to miss the top of my head. I felt the air whistling as the appendage passed within inches of my head, then I was rolling along the ground with the world spinning around me. A high pitched yowl told me that Deotra was now in the fight, followed by metal scraping loudly. By the time I came to a stop, I could tell that the battle was in full swing.
At first glance it looked even enough with Deotra darting in and out with her fox form to strike with her claws while Drache danced around her mother with the Hand of the Usurper seeking an opening. But what my years of watching Alverd told me was that Evros had them both beat. Despite being outnumbered and getting attacked from multiple sides, she was holding her own with no trouble. The scepter doubled as both quarterstaff and mage implement, spraying streams of seething red energy as its wielder moved with unnatural speed.
None of Evros' movements were natural or even possible with a human skeleton. I swore several times I saw her spine bend farther than it should or her arms contorting themselves to defend her from sneak attacks aimed at her blind spots. When Deotra leapt in from above to try and strike at Evros' head, the old crone's arm lashed at her like a whip, catching her across the face, and knocking her away with a pained whimper.
How do we kill this apparition? I directed the question at Drache as I pulled heat out of my body to fuel some fire of my own. Until I got a decent answer, my own plan was to try and divert Evros' attention towards myself and open her up to some attacks. My body heat twisted around the head of the staff and split into two separate fireballs, ready for me to launch. I sent the two arcing towards my target at wide angles, trying to hit two opposite sides to make them harder to block.
Both projectiles hit Evros, but she seemed unfazed by the attacks. They detonated against her rancid form, enveloping her in a thin curtain of smoke. Unfortunately the only thing the smoke did was make it impossible to see her until she hurtled toward me like an emaciated gorilla, her jaw open as she shrieked at ear-shattering volume.
In her haste to attack me, Evros had forgotten briefly that she was the singular combatant in a three on one fight. Drache swung the Hand at her mother, drawing a long slash across the side of her torso and unleashing a torrent of tarlike blood that hit the ground hissing like acid. The abomination corkscrewed in midair to prevent the Hand from digging in deep enough to inflict a fatal blow, and she gave up on trying to get me. She landed in a heap of misshapen limbs and rattling bones off to my side, flopping around like an overturned spider as more blood gouted out of her fresh wound.
My faithful familiar wasn't going to let it end there. Before Evros could recover Deotra was at her throat, fangs digging into the necrotic flesh. She got a faceful of blood for her trouble and a vicious backlash of pain ripped through my head as our connection worked against us. Evros seized Deotra by one of her ears, refusing to let her go as more blood sprayed across her fur.
If I was afraid of Evros before, that fear vanished the moment I felt, rather than perceived, the image of a small and hurt Deotra curling into a ball with her hands over her head. Concentrating the sweat and moisture in my body towards the head of my staff, I solidified a ball of liquid onto the top of it, complete with spikes jutting out like a morningstar. With both hands on my staff I ran to Deotra's aid. Letting out a primal scream, I brought the improvised weapon down on Evros' head, and she did me the favor of turning to look at me just before the spikes made contact.
A spike impaled her right through the eye, causing a fountain of ichor to spurt out. The blood hit the morningstar and melted the ice into a cloud of choking steam, but I wasn't going to give up so easily. I brought the half melted orb up over my head to make another strike. "Let her go, bitch!" She clawed at me weakly with her left hand, trying to see me through the haze with only one working eye that glowed bright enough for me to see. You know what they say, an eye for an eye.
The staff came down and struck true. Emboldened by the unholy roar that Evros let loose as the spike rammed through her other eye, I put my leg up and jammed my boot against the head, trying to push it as far into Evros' skull as possible. "Deotra, get out of here! Now!" Heeding my command, she wriggled free, limping away from us as fast as she could. "Drache, come on! I can't fight your demons for you!" Despite my superior leverage, it was only a matter of time before Evros pushed me off of her.
"Wretches! Parasites! I am a king, and you will heed me! KNEEL!" I had a second to grit my teeth before the full force of her artifact-reinforced will slammed into my mental defences, like a tsunami against a tidebreaker. I thought I was ready, but my pathetic little elementary warding spell was never gonna cut it.
Searing across every thought, eroding my wards instantly, the command burned through my brain with overwhelming and unstoppable force. My knees turned to mush, and already I felt my body moving to comply with her demand. No, no, no. Please, gods, no. My staff tumbled from my hands as my torso went slack, barely able to stay upright as my legs folded. Shambling to her feet, twin waterfalls of black blood cascading from her eyes. Yet somehow, even blinded as she supposedly was, I could tell that she could still see me with the cavernous black holes where her eyes had been. The empty sockets stared at me and I froze as they bored into my very soul.
"What have we here?" My blood ran cold in my veins as she reached down and wrapped her fingers around the staff. "Well, well, well. I'll be taking that." Before I could stop her, she lifted up the Staff of Farewells in her free hand, cradling it longingly. "Oh, but you don't even know the true potential of this relic, do you boy? Or what it costs to unlock it?" Even without eyes, it felt like she was staring directly into my soul. "What else has my daughter hidden from you, hmm?"
A needle of psychic force stabbed into my skull, bringing with it the familiar discomfort of the mental pressure Burundus exerted through his inherent magic ability. "Gah, what are you on about?" Teeth clenched, I tried to drown out the influence but it was like plugging a sieve with sand. I'm not gonna last much longer against this. It's too much…
On the edge of my perception Drache came charging in, the Hand held up high to plunge into the back of her mother's head. With a motion similar to swatting a fly the decrepit old crone backhanded her daughter away, the impact accentuated by a blast of amplified magical force that knocked Drache through the air and the Hand from her grip. I didn't see where it landed, but it had to be close.
"I don't know why I expected more. Without your goddess and angels to save you, you would've rolled over and died and none of this would've happened. Twelve worlds scorched to buy victory and all it amounted to was a massive waste of my time." Evros' head swiveled around, scepter in hand, attempting to find me. The blood from her destroyed eyes rose from the ground and formed crystalline shards that levitated around it, hovering like daggers ready to be thrown. When she next spoke, it was not her voice that emerged but Burundus'.
"When I offer the Hand to my master, all will be forgiven. You will not live to see the rift open again, and for that you should be grateful."
A blur of orange darted in front of me as the shards shot towards me. Over a dozen projectiles of acidic blood hardened into razor sharp blades embedded themselves into the torso of my familiar, who had leaped in between us to use her own body as a shield. The force of the shards propelled her into me, and we skidded backward as I tried to break our momentum. Deotra let out a heartwrenching sigh before the fox form melted away.
Her clothes were torn to shreds, burned in multiple places where the blood had eaten through her clothing. She was shivering, biting her lip so as not to scream. "I-It's okay. I can't die as long as you live, so this… this is nothing." She tried to smile at me but didn't manage it. "I would be lying if I said this didn't hurt, though." Tears rolled out of her eyes, and she squeezed them shut as she fought back the urge to cry out. "It hurts so much."
Hugging her tight to my chest, I frantically looked around. Just to my right, the Hand of the Usurper was within reach. I grasped the hilt and pointed it at Evros, my arm visibly shaking. If Evros was concerned about the danger the Hand posed, she didn't show it at first. Instead, her sightless eyes were fixed on our spot where Deotra's voice was coming from. "Don't come any closer." Fear took any menace my threat had, my voice cracking as I waved the dagger around like a lunatic.
Then the most hideous smile spread across Evros' face. "Oho, look at you. So brave now that your precious pet has come to shield you. In my age, that's all familiars were. Just tools for mages to use. Shields. Slaves." She drew her last word out, every syllable dripping with glee. "Let me show you." She leaned over in my direction, her body seeming to elongate like some nightmare creature come to life, looming over me like a dead tree.
"Go ahead. Slit my throat. Bathe your precious familiar in my blood and listen to her wail." The flesh on her neck almost bulged as if in anticipation, gangrenous veins exposed as if telling me where to cut. "It's true what she says. She can't die so long as you live. But that doesn't mean she won't suffer." Her voice had an almost childlike euphoria to it, as if the notion of her own death were something she wanted.
The Hand, perhaps sensing the presence of something it was meant to kill, yanked my arm towards her throat. I was now fighting a battle on two fronts: Burundus hammering at the weakening shroud defending my mind and the Hand trying to slice open Evros' jugular. "Do it, soft heart. Her pain is only temporary. Surely you can see that. It's not your pain. It's her burden to bear."
The blade was kissing the vein, the silver sheen showing me images of atrocities that I didn't have words to describe. "As. It. Should. Be." She hissed, clearly baiting me. I won't do it. I won't do it. I won't do it. You can't make me. She is not my slave. She is not my shield. Shut up shut up shut up stop talking shut the voices out…
"Do it! End me! Become me!" She snarled, black spittle flying from her mouth. The Hand was vibrating in my grip, ready to rip open her larynx. Arrrgh, stop! I'm not going to do it! I'm not going to hurt Deotra! Get out of my head! Lances of sheer agony spiked into my brain as Burundus' assault pierced through my defenses, and just before I lost control I whipped my hand forward and threw the knife into the darkness behind Evros.
"Fuck. You." I glared at her, pulling my quivering familiar closer. "I won't do it." Teeth clattered in the skull-like face of my tormentor as she chuckled at me. "Soft heart. Too weak willed to do what needs to be done. Even my daughter didn't hesitate to end me once she had the chance."
It was my turn to grin at her. "I'll bet. Which is why I'm sure she's going to enjoy killing you again."
A thin thread of fire coiled around Evros' neck, snapping tight as it yanked her backward. Drache pulled the other end with both hands, dragging the screaming body of her ghoulish mother across the ground and away from me. With inhuman strength she wound the thread over and over her arm. She had the Hand of the Usurper, blade held downward in a reverse grip and ready to taste blood.
One last tug and Evros slid to a halt in front of her daughter. "Here we are again. Ends. Means. Happily ever after's. I never had to do anything to turn you into me, my dear. You made that choice all on your own." Drache raised her arm and the knife came down. A torrent of burning ichor spilled from the laughing monster's chest.
Despite already being at a safe distance from the mess, I worked my legs frantically, trying to scoot Deotra and I further away. Even as Drache ripped open the wound and brought her arm back for another attack, Evros continued to let out her mangled laughter, black tar gushing out of her mouth and chest. The next cut opened her throat, but still the laughter continued. It didn't matter how hard I squeezed my eyes shut, I could still hear Drache cutting again and again until all that remained was the frenzied cries of a woman savaging a corpse.
When I opened my eyes again, she was standing before me. In spite of everything we'd just been through, her clothes weren't stained or damaged at all and the only sign that she'd been in a fearsome life or death struggle was her heavy breathing. The Hand of the Usurper was still dripping with Evros' blood, although the eerie feeling that something in the blade wanted me to keep looking at it forced me to avert my gaze. "So what do we do now? Deotra's hurt." She was still shaking, her eyes wide. I didn't want to remove the shards for fear of causing more pain.
"She's not going to die, Kuro. Pull yourself together. And try not to lose this next time." She threw the Staff of Farewells to me. It clattered to the ground next to me. "I said she's hurt. Help her. Do something. Or tell me what to do so I can do it. She's in pain, Drache." I pleaded with her, but my rescuer didn't change her expression.
"You're wasting time. I need you to listen to me. I'm going to make a path out of here, and you need to be ready for the transition back to reality. It will be jarring-"
"Wow. You wouldn't have made it this far without Deotra and you can't stop for one second to help her." Then, I went and put one foot in my grave just to get a dig in at her. "Like mother, like daughter."
Her entire body stiffened, her expression turning neutral out of shock. Her crimson eyes narrowed until they were practically slits. Her head tilted just slightly, her right eye twitching. "Watch yourself. Or you'll find out just how true that is." The temperature around me rose sharply, the hairs on the back of my neck standing as embers ignited all around me. She knelt down on one knee, her left hand reaching out towards me. Transfixed by the lack of emotion in her ears, I was too terrified to move.
Her hand alighted upon Deotra's head. Before my eyes, the blemishes on her skin mended, the shards in her body shattering before falling away from clean, unmarred flesh. "Today you found the one way to get under my skin. I advise you not to make a habit of invoking it." When she lifted her hand, Deotra's breathing slowed to a more calm pace, and her eyes focused on me.
"Ohhhh. Kuro? Is that you? The pain's gone. What happened?"
I gave her a hug, and after a moment's hesitation she returned it, still confused.
"It's okay. Just a little posturing." I shot Drache a nasty look over Deotra's shoulder. She gave me one right back, a petulant sneer reminiscent of a child's. This is not over, though. We're right back at square one. It's one thing if she wants to badger or threaten me, but letting Deotra suffer is another matter entirely. I guess I still have to watch my back around Drache after all.
"So how do we get out of here?" I asked.
"With his phantoms vanquished, Burundus' cage cannot hold us so easily. We use the rules of his nightmare realm against him, manifest a way out, and continue our escape. I suspect in the real world, only a few seconds have transpired. So once we cut our way out, we'll be exactly where we were when this all began." Right, fleeing from an eldritch horror out in the middle of the Kierhaian countryside. We're literally gonna be hitting the ground running.
Before I could question the metaphysical aspects of what Drache was talking about, she thrust the Hand forward, digging it into thin air and somehow managing to make a cut in the fabric of Burundus' mind prison. Light poured from the tear, and it engulfed all of us. I threw my arm up to block the light, but instead it washed over me. Seconds later, I was back in the real world, and Deotra was already running.
Behind us, Burundus let out a gut wrenching roar of anger. Rings of magical energy appeared all over his slime-covered body, heralding an imminent attack. I held up the Staff of Farewells, drawing in what power I could to prepare our defenses.
A dozen lances of intense eldritch power shot forward. Most of them ricocheted off my shield, with several missing us entirely. Deotra bounded over a hill, and in the far, far distance I spied a natural rock formation rising out of the ground, a narrow passageway between two almost sheer cliffs.
Exhaustion made my limbs feel heavy, but I conjured up another shield. One way or another, we're going to get it done. Even if it kills me.
I really hoped that wouldn't be the case.