236. The Twice-lit War (Part 2)

  Ash into fire. Fire into ash.

  The twice-lit battlefield had transformed into VOIDLING’s personal playground, engulfed in flames of black, green, umber, purple, red, and white. No mere optical illusion. A feat of pyrotechnics possible only to that which had mastered all the colors of the Seerflame rainbow.

  As soon as Serac climbed out of the bunker, she had to duck under jets of hell-black fire, hot as catharsis and stubborn as sin. Next, she stepped over green flames in the shape of a snake, writhing and hungering for prey. Finally, she waded through a fog of umber flames, as if the visibility wasn’t already bad enough.

  Serac knew the work of [Ash to Ash] when she saw it, especially now that it’d been amplified to a city-wide scale. And feeling its effects as one of the intended targets, she gained a fuller understanding of its design.

  VOIDLING’s flames didn’t mean to hurt. Didn’t even care to confound with its kaleidoscopic display. Rather, it was a filter of sorts. A question posed to the masses in an effort to rile them up.

  Are any of you fools crazy—frenzied—enough to keep up with me?

  Serac felt the effects as a deluge of adrenaline. Eyes bulged. Heart raced. Horns shook like someone had taken a LOUDSPEAKER to them.

  Like the Dusklit Dragon before her, Serac wanted to cow and hide from the flames. Like DLEE and ORD, she wanted to lash out, jump around, waste her fight on nothing but shadows. Unlike them, she resisted. Steeled her eyes, stilled her heart, and held her head up high, the better to cut through the flames with her onyx horns.

  You’re asking if anyone wants to play? Hell yes, I’m up for it!

  Along the way, she passed others who hadn’t been as foolish—or perhaps as [Ambitious]. Mrigas and Tiryagas alike, from both sides of the war, now knelt in the smoke and haze. The same submissive horde Serac had passed on her way to Tidereign’s summit. Umber shades living out their history, exactly as had been stitched in the VEILS.

  She was the difference. Had to be. The anomaly that had snuck its way into an otherwise foregone conclusion. The outrealmer to match another. The Upheaver to flip reality itself on its head.

  Stand. Climb. Fight. Past the ash and fire. Past the smoke and haze.

  Ascension Promontory looked a lot different to how Serac remembered it. In place of purple fog, the SKIES were blanketed by a fractured Gloam. Golden sunlight and starry night simultaneously co-existed and split apart at the seams. Entire galaxies seeped as watercolor across a rippling canvas.

  Beneath the all-too-real phantasmagoria, Serac was joined by two others. Wayfarers who’d charged through the filtering flames shouting ‘pick me, pick me!’. Hulking Gladiolus on one side and self-serious Travertine on the other (not quite on nickname-basis with this Trav just yet). Opposing soldiers of the Twice-lit War, joined in truce to smite the original instigator. Speaking of which…

  VOIDLING lorded its presence over the challengers, hovering in mid-air atop a solid cloud of lotus-white flames. A funky application of [Ash to Ash] that instantly made Serac jealous. And proof of the caster’s outsized power compared to its Oathborn facsimile from another timeline. This was the shadow-wrought maceman in its truest and freest form, as evidenced by:

  [Designation: VOIDLING—Risen of Ash and Dust]

  [Aberrant Race: Upheaver]

  [Aberrant Class: Realm Usurper]

  [DEIFIC Instrument: REVOLVER]

  What the hell’s all this??? Serac’s eyes bulged again, this time for an entirely different reason. So much to take in… but this is the worst time for it!

  “I’ve also made note of it, Serac,” Trippy with the timely reassurance, though not without a slight hitch in his monotone. “Focus on your fight. Win. We’ll debrief once it’s all over.”

  No argument. It still took Serac everything to shift her attention away from VOIDLING’s absolute mind-breaker of a label and back onto the task at hand. To that end, she looked to her impromptu party members for support.

  “You’re made of sterner stuff than you look, Ms Rakshasa,” Gladiolus growled good-naturedly. If the same words had come out of Flint the Butcher’s mouth, they’d surely have been a veiled insult. Here though, they sounded genuinely appreciative.

  “You two! See that you don’t get in our way.” This from a cockier yet somehow also more neurotic version of Trav. Serac wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, nor of the ‘our’ in the absence of visible DLEE and ORD.

  No matter. It’d all become clear in due course, as souls bared all in a clash of might. And like any good boss worth their salt, VOIDLING opened the proceedings, first with a well-known combo.

  [Forma One: EXCEED THY GRASP]

  VOIDLING’s shapeshifting polemace—another version of REVOLVER, if Pathsight were to be believed—shot downward with a splash of ink. Tree. And that was where the similarities with the technique familiar to Serac ended.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  For the ink lingered to take physical form. Roots, vines, branches, and leaves. A living forest sprouted from the elongated polemace, to then quite literally grasp for the Wayfarers on the ground!

  Each of the trio reacted in their own way. Gladiolus, predictably enough, [Dissected] and [Transected] the forest as it rushed his way. From Travertine emerged two cervine shadows: ORD with his trusty antler parries and DLEE to nimbly bait the [Grasp] away from her Oathkeeper. As for Serac…

  Unlike her companions, the gunslinger lacked any foreknowledge about the boss’s moveset. She had to react and improvise, guided only by the need to cycle through her Chambers as quickly as possible. To that end…

  [Chamber One: CATHARSIS]

  [235!]

  REVOLVER versus REVOLVER. Wildfire against forest. The principle was sound and the outcome satisfactory, though it did come at the cost of hefty self-damage. Serac would gladly take it, as she watched the [Grasping] roots and vines burn to crisp at her feet.

  No rest for the weary, nor for the wicked. For [Grasp] had only been the first part of a three-stage combo.

  [Forma Two: BE THOU AS WATER]

  The polemace kept its stretched-out profile as it bent and whipped sideways across the arena. A splash of ink—water—which then immediately turned into splashes of actual water. A massive tsunami followed the sweeping arc of VOIDLING’s attack, threatening to drown all caught in its path.

  The Tidereigners were ready to face the tides. Gladiolus used [Incision] to cut into the advancing tsunami, then [Excision] to pull himself out on the other side. Travertine took the time to scoff in indignation, before turning his own polearm sideways. [Hunter’s Stand]. A golden slingshot to punch a hole, followed by a deft jump through the hoop with minimal fuss.

  Serac again had to scramble for solutions. Chamber Two against Forma Two. [Rumpepille] into GRENADIER into [Rumpepromp]. Just in the nick of time, exploding the tsunami into foam for Serac to squeeze her eyes shut and ‘swim’ past.

  Still breathing. Still standing. And now, time to face:

  [Forma Three: NO STONE UNTURNED]

  The polemace version of REVOLVER swelled again in size as its wielder brought it above its head, where it nearly touched the fractures upon the Gloam. Then, from SKY to ink-splash earth in one violent motion. The mace hit the ground with a resounding BOOOOOM!

  Ah well, that explains the sound from earlier! It also explained the ensuing earthquake. In its original form, [Stone]’s secondary AOE took both ‘Area’ and ‘Effect’ to their extremes. A city-wide disaster, with Ascension Promontory’s SKY-hung disc as the epicenter.

  Here, even the locals had to pull out the big guns.

  Gladiolus used a DREAMPROWLER technique called [Phantom Slumber]. The hulking surgeon went limp like an anesthetized patient, phasing out of the physical world to give himself a brief period of invulnerability.

  Travertine, on the other hand, leaned on his deer familiars. A catapult high into the air off DLEE’s hind-kick, followed by ORD’s sturdy back to catch the fall.

  As for Serac—the stranger from another timeline—she no longer had an Oathborn to help her, its ‘original’ incarnation being the very boss she was trying to survive. She had to find and use whatever tool within her reach, up to and including the enemy’s weapon.

  First, she summoned Ash the moment [Stone] hit, thus boosting herself up to her castle’s battlement. From the new vantage point, she jumped as high and far as she could, aiming to land on top of mace-REVOLVER.

  It worked. VOIDLING entered a temporary state of recovery at the end of its combo, letting its polemace rest on the ground at a rather convenient angle. Serac wasted no time to sprint up the shadowy incline, climbing as far as she dared to bring the Realm Usurper within gun-REVOLVER range.

  [Chamber Three: YOUR NAME]

  [Avowment Target: VOIDLING]

  The boss lorded its presence from above a cloud of its own creation. But the challenger had come ready to play, no matter what wacky obstacle rose before her.

  [VOIDLING Status Effect: AVOWED]

  [258!]

  The bullet gave off an ear-splitting ‘cliinng!’ as it bounced against VOIDLING’s Circlet. No matter. The damage registered all the same, and Serac was surprised to see it erase nearly a tenth of the boss’s Health bar.

  VOIDLING isn’t all that tanky, she realized. Which, in my experience, usually means it’s hard to hit!

  The thought was proven correct nearly as soon as she had it. Having recovered its Stamina, VOIDLING bounced away to safety upon its cheat of a cloud. At the same time, mace-REVOLVER shrank back to its base form, thus robbing Serac of her foothold.

  She’d anticipated the change in terrain, already sliding down the polemace before it could disappear on her. Which then allowed her to land safely on Ash: the good castle that’d stood its ground while tanking an earthquake.

  Several sequences into the fight, the good guys hadn’t done much. Namely, they’d survived the boss’s opening flurry while putting the first dent into its HP pool. But Serac, for her part, was more than satisfied, having set the stage for what she envisaged to be an epic fightback.

  [Health (reserved): 353/588]

  [Mana (reserved): 37/62]

  [Cartridge (reserved): 3|28]

  Her earlier expenditures, coupled with [Your Name]’s penalties, already put her in a highly precarious position. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. In order to seize the Day, Serac was ready and willing to risk it all.

  Two REVOLVER wielders locked ‘eyes’ across the arena—one pair clouded over by lurching shadows, the other crimson like the flames she’d crawled out of to be here. They both knew. This was the moment they’d both been hurtling toward—Kalpas apart yet united by destiny.

  “You have something that belongs to me,” Serac declared with an arrogance that was entirely her own. The inverse or the obverse? Neither and both. “I mean to take it from you and make it mine… here, now, and forever more.”

  The fractured Gloam trembled with a maniacal cackle. Serac’s Circlet burned anew with excruciating pain, but she ignored it… knowing relief and satisfaction were nigh. She gripped her six-shooter and raised it to the SKY.

  As Serac held VOIDLING in her sights, what she saw wasn’t merely a dangerous enemy that needed smiting. No, she also saw a shadow of her own formidable self. Waiting to be restored to its rightful place—and in the only forma that made sense to a gunslinger.

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