Frost 22, 122
The witch dragged herself along the path.
It was more open now, out from underneath the dark canopy of the jungle, and it was only a matter of time before the primal finally caught up with her. She couldn’t say whether she’d make it to the glowing deposits of Dawnstone by then or not.
If Imogen Ward had one natural gift, it was her ability to improvise. She’d always been good at looking at problems, looking at the resources available to her, and coming up with a plan. They weren’t always good plans, but they worked more often than they had any real right to.
This time, though, it wasn’t looking good. If she got to the dragonshards, and if she could tap their power, and if she could control a relevant fraction without being burnt away from the inside out, she would still need to be able to do something with that light.
And she had an idea. Both more and less than an idea, really. Over the last few days of travel, her exhausted mind had devised, as if through a haze of madness, the notion of a spell which could plausibly defeat the primal. It was far and away the most complicated thing she’d ever considered casting, but if she could pull it off…
Well, that was the one problem. It wasn’t going to work.
The spell had a few moving parts. Light, space, control, and investiture. If she had her aether, she could cast each part of the spell seperately, no question. But she couldn’t figure out how she could cast them all together. And it wouldn’t do a damn thing if she couldn’t unify the parts.
Still, she’d come this far. No point in letting the primal kill her without even trying to fight back, was there?
Walking got harder as the path hit the foothills of the mountain. She was long past the point where her legs ached, and well into the point of trauma where pain receptors simply went dead. She didn’t bother asking Kitty if or when the primal was sleeping; if she lay down now, there was no real question of her getting back up. Frankly, even if she could somehow best the Primal, it didn’t seem likely that she was going to be able to get back.
Well, one unsolvable issue at a time.
The jungle hung like a skirt around the foothills for quite some distance, but the treeline eventually gave out completely. She was tempted to try to use the individual copses of greenery as cover, to get a little more distance- but the fact was, she couldn’t afford to leave the road at this point. It wasn’t paved or anything, but the ancient wear and tear on the path between the center of the isle and the mountain marked out a more gentle path than any other.
“Ho, there!”
A strident female voice rang out from the rocks above, and Imogen’s ears registered the sounds of approaching footsteps. “Are you well? You look terrible!”
Inclining her head slightly, the witch saw that an Orkhan woman was walking down towards her, a look of concern on her face. Two Ecithian men followed just behind, both bearing enormous Dratheran blades. They looked less concerned for the struggling witch and more ready to draw on her.
Tears streamed down Imogen’s face. This was a bitter irony, wasn’t it? She’d almost killed herself trying to draw the fucking monster away from everyone else, and here they turned up anyway.
"Go ‘way," she croaked at the first people she’d seen in days, "Get out of here!"
The woman looked confused, and the younger of the two men stepped forward. “Careful, pilgrim. I can see you’re in a bad way, but we will not tolerate disrespect to the Seer.”
Well, that was the worst joke of them all, wasn’t it? The woman wore no obvious badge of office, but now the witch saw the familiarity between her and her guardians, the same wary bearing she’d seen in the small groups of guardians in Galetira’s temple.
"There is a primal behind me," she hissed at the young acolyte of Raxen, "Leave!"
The two men exchanged baffled looks. The older ork stepped closer and leaned down to get a better look at the witch’s injuries, while the young woman stared at him.
“She certainly thinks it’s true.” the older ork acknowledged. “But we’re on Ailos. There are no primals here.”
The young woman drew closer, causing her guardians to grow tense. “Her aura is very weak. She needs to rest, let’s take her to the old shrine of Ysadre up the-”
The Seer’s voice faded as she noticed the gleaming sword strapped to Imogen’s belt. “That manifestation is drawing power you can’t afford, pilgrim. You should dismiss it.”
"No!" the witch objected, her voice weak, "Breaks the spell, never wake up again."
The three companions stood in bewilderment for a moment before the young Seer shook her head and directed her guardians again to pick up the flagging witch and begin walking back up the mountainside.
Even carrying Imogen, the three made much better time up the mountain than she could have expected while staggering alone. They began to pass the first deposits of Dawnstone, small speckles in the surrounding rocks which gleamed with more than just the reflected light of the sun.
They hadn’t gotten more than a mile, however, before the older guardian spoke again: “There’s something moving on the path behind us.”
The three paused, turning to look. There, at the treeline, was distant movement- something large and dark moving quickly towards the mountainside.
The Seer wasted no time gawking, but turned to the witch slung over her companion’s shoulder. “What is that?”
"Silent Fisher" she replied, breathing a little more easily now that she wasn’t struggling to walk, "Kegumu Rekaka."
There was silence. Then:
“...why is a primal here?”
"I pissed it off, I think." said the witch, reluctantly, "Leave me here and get out of its sight, it won’t follow."
The younger of the two orkhan guardians glanced over at the Seer for confirmation, but any hope he or Imogen had died upon seeing the stubborn look on her face.
“We keep going.”
It was clear to the witch that neither of the orkhan men liked hearing that. Probably it still hadn’t quite settled that they’d run into a primal, but she didn’t doubt that they both realized that this was something the three of them should not be fighting.
“What was your plan?” the woman asked Imogen, bluntly. It seemed she did understand, to some extent, what a problem she’d just stepped into.
"Get to a big Dawnstone." the witch replied. It was easier to answer in short sentences. "I’m a light elementalist. Try to hit it with enough to… get it."
The Seer looked unconvinced by the stratagem, but apparently her divine patron had not sent her here with a better answer. “There’s plenty of the dragonshard around Ysandre’s shrine.”
“Not much cover, though.” the older guard grunted, shifting himself a little to resettle Imogen’s weight. He squinted into the rain-filled grey skies. “Miserable day for a battle.”
The shrine of Ysandre was fairly austere, even for an Orkhan monument. It was made of marble, of course, but only about a thousand square meters, all told. There were no statues inside, but a single bas relief showing the old goddess in her act of sacrifice during the Sundering. It was more akin to a mausoleum than a temple.
The older man unceremoniously dumped Imogen onto a raised table, presumably a place to put offerings–she wouldn’t quite call it an altar–and then went to join his companion at the door, keeping watch on the encroaching Primal’s progress.
“Here we are.” the Seer told the witch, “If you’re going to do something, better do it now.”
Imogen grimaced, struggling even to push herself to a seated position on the table. "I don’t… think that I can even stand."
“I’ll deal with that.” the Seer said, staring intently into the witch’s eyes. “You fix this before it kills them, understand me?”
The witch didn’t feel like she was in much of a position to guarantee any such thing, but it was no use arguing with those eyes. She nodded, and the Seer of Galetira placed a hand on her chest.
There was a strange rush of feelings throughout the Sunsinger’s body. Numb limbs suddenly sparked to life with pain, and then the pain… washed away? Energy ran through Imogen’s body, as though she had just imbibed an alchemist’s draught.
The Seer staggered, pulling away from the witch as she felt the suffering she’d just taken, and- moaning? The poor girl was in so much pain that it almost looked like she was giddy, rubbing both arms and breathing far too fast.
“G-go!” the Seer gasped, shaking, eyes wide. Concern for her guardians, no doubt, and perhaps shame to be observed in the throes of such obvious agony.
Imogen rolled easily off the table, her body again responding to her. There was still pain–quite a lot, actually–but it was of the kind she could fight through, rather than the sort which disabled. She raced for the door of the temple, yanking her sword free of its binding.
The witch exited the dead goddess’ shrine, hoping not to join her. She felt relatively vigorous, but the Seer’s strange blessing had only taken the pain and exhaustion; it had not replenished her lost aether.
A hundred yards away, the two guardians engaged the primal. Their stances were perfect examples of the modern Dratheran style, which Imogen thought was generally superior to most schools of swordplay, and their blades practically glowed with whatever strange powers the Arbiter had imbued them with. They were plainly trained in team-fighting tactics, easily flanking their faster and larger opponent in the hopes of splitting its attention and pinning it down.
In another circumstance, she would have loved to just stand there and observe how master swordsmen approached fighting a monster. But even a moment of inaction could spell their certain deaths, so she instead made a dash for the largest deposit of Illuminite she could see.
One key to using a dragonshard was touch; without that, it was very difficult to create the pathways of intent from user to stone which would result in any actual effect. Here, the Dawnstone was just out of reach, too high to access from the flat rock around Ysandre’s shrine unless she started climbing.
Or.
Imogen pulled her sword back over her head, gripping it with both hands, and chucked it up onto the deposit of dragonshard above. She was her Pact weapons, after all, and she had great experience in using shards through them. The sword arced neatly up onto the jutting deposit above, landing precariously on its side. Wasting no time, the witch ducked and covered her eyes, reached into the stones with her mind and demanded that they bring light.
The three combatants recovered from the flash at different speeds.
Imogen had timed the effort so that only The Silent Fisher was facing the rock, and so both of the Orkhan men managed to get their wits back first, though the flash reflecting off the rocks around them had still been bright enough to dazzle. Both renewed their attacks on the stunned primal, and accomplished…
…nothing.
Raxen-blessed blades left scratches on the creature’s impenetrable pinions, but neither of the men were strong enough to do the kinds of aphoristic cuts which were the hallmark of the demigod’s practice. Blinking, unable to clearly make out its opponents, the Silent Fisher simply swept them away with its wings, knocking them backwards away from the Primal as it tried to recover its vision.
For a moment, the witch felt some hope that she had, at least, blinded it. Maybe it couldn’t track her, any longer? Perhaps it would be stuck wandering this mountain.
Then the primal blinked, long and hard, and its eyes refocused on Imogen. It began to slowly advance.
Imogen stood in front of the advancing primal, bereft of even her sword, lacking the power to call it back. It wasn’t going to be quick, she knew that. She’d been killed by The Silent Fisher before, after all.
She heard movement next to her, and realized that the two men had regained their feet and were maneuvering out to block the Silent Fisher yet again. Buying another few seconds with their lives, that’s all it ever was.
“Can you save them?”
The Seer’s voice, still shaky, came from behind her. Imogen turned her head to see the woman just a few feet away, leaning against the entry to Ysandre’s shrine.
"I’ve got no aether left." she responded, "If I did, I could-"
The idea for the spell flashed through her mind again, but she still couldn’t quite see how to cast it. Still, that wasn’t the big problem now. She had no aether, after all.
“Use mine.” the Seer said, voice steadier now. “Here.”
Imogen felt the woman’s hand on the small of her back, and suddenly felt a surge of energy through her spirit.
It wasn’t a lot of power, in the grand scheme of things. The witch was used to being able to throw magic around like nothing. But it was enough that she could invoke the rune of Traversion. She could save herself and the Seer, jump all the way to the mainland and make a run for the safety of Drathera. She could save the Seer and her guardians, send them safely away to the Temple of Light and meet her fate here, by herself.
…but if she was just a little cleverer than that, maybe she could save all of them.
The witch invoked the runes she’d need in turn, taking her time as death grew closer. Traversion, obviously. Elementalism. Reaving, to alloy the spell. And then…
And then she ran out of power. The Seer’s aether wasn’t going to cut it, and she still hadn’t figured out how to form the substrate of the work. The power roiled within her, lacking any outlet.
Use this.
A new voice invaded Imogen’s mind, almost entirely unfamiliar to her. Through an almost-forgotten conduit came a sudden outpouring of aether, enough to dwarf the trickle from the woman behind her. The witch nearly lost control of the sudden influx of power.
Concentrate. Breathe, like this. Deeply. Do it, or you’re dead.
The witch inhaled deeply- and kept inhaling. The air on the little plateau began to move as Imogen continued to inhale. Beneath her clothes, the rune of Animus flickered to life, all the markings on her body shining.
And then she breathed out.
When Imogen was younger, her father had taught her about magic. The subject was taboo in Zaichaer, which meant everyone talked about it a lot, but few people had any real knowledge. But Valmont was a Sunsinger, and knew many secret things.
When she was first learning, as a small girl, she could remember asking him:
"Why don’t you just cast a spell to make the Order go away?"
He’d laughed at that, of course, but he treated the inane question with deadly seriousness. Her father had explained that magic is limited by aether, by the channels in which it is cast, by the caster’s will and their connections. The Runes only worked in certain ways, glyphs could only shape energy through certain circuits. And in the end, the magic did specific things to everyone who was caught up in it. You could cast a spell to kill everyone in a room, but you couldn’t simply ‘make the bad guys go away.’
He was entirely right, of course, but Imogen had never quite forgotten that original idea.
After all, what if you could?
The spell was simple in concept, though not in execution. Through Animus, the witch conjured a fire inside herself, an aetheric organ which converted air and energy to a deadly force. As it formed, the fire was dematerialized and imbued with an extradimensional aspect, Reaving and Traversion infusing the element with the substance of a simple spell. Finally, the fire was converted from one base element to another.
As a result, Imogen opened her mouth as though she were back in Franky’s bar, pretending to be a dragon to entertain children, and exhaled a beam of golden light towards the Silent Fisher.
The light looked like fire, but it was pale and ghostly, and moved far too fast. The witch felt it like any of her Pact weapons, as an extension of self and soul. It was also, admittedly, thin. It couldn’t harm a child, unless they stayed in it long enough to sunburn.
But that was fine.
The primal saw the attack coming; though it wasn’t faster than light, it was fast enough to dodge a telegraphed blast before it happened. Unfortunately for the monster, it didn’t matter. Infused with the energies of a Pact weapon, the beam simply widened into a cone, engulfing the entire area in front of the shrine.
The two orkhan felt nothing at all as the light engulfed them. Guided by the witch’s will, the light slid around them harmlessly. Where it hit Kegumu, however, the light applied an absolutely minute amount of force. Even less than the eruption from the Dawnstone earlier, nothing like sufficient to even slow a primal.
But the tiniest amount of force was all it took to push anything through the veil of Slipspace.
The Silent Fisher found itself suddenly surrounded by golden light. The rocks of the Mountain of Light began to move away as the light carried it gently into Slipspace, the thin window of the portal growing distant. The primal tried to run, to claw at the light, to spread its wings and fly back towards its prey- but to no avail. Surrounded by nothing, Kegumu Rekaka could exert no force whatsoever.
Helplessly, the primal tumbled through slipspace. The light carried it across Ailos and the ocean in a matter of seconds, the ghostly world spinning below it until the Silent Fisher found itself falling out of the sky over Ecith, thousands of miles south.
The light continued to pour out of the witch's open mouth as she bent all of her concentration on the manifold aspects of the spell--keeping it from consuming the two Orkhan guardians, pushing the struggling Primal through, and remaining standing--but she bent her will to avoid causing too much damage to her surroundings. The great bream of light speared away from the mountain, cutting a shallow trench in a foothill and erasing a handful of trees before the witch forced it upward. The spell cut into the clouds above, opening a hole in the rain above the Mountain of Light- and there, at last, it petered out, the energy dissipating above the storm.
Imogen fell to her hands and knees, gasping, as she fought to revert her internal organs to something better-suited for breathing. Behind her, she felt the Seer shudder and fall, landing in a seated position.
The two men looked at the tableau in silence, and then the younger let out a shaky laugh, arms dropping to his sides.
“What was that?” he asked, “Just how did you do that?”
The Seer shuddered, coughing, and reached over to help Imogen to a seated position.
“I think I understand, now.” the Seer said, “Are you the… Great Witch, Imogen?”
"What?" the witch choked out, coughing, "Are you with Norani, or something?"
“No,” the Seer replied, “We’re here with a message from the Senate.”
"Huh." said Imogen Ward, "You have got incredible timing."
Unseen to the distracted group below, Imogen’s pact sword slowly dematerialized on the rocks below. The spell which had sustained it for seven days had come to fruition, and the magics the witch had cast finally ran their course.
The dream was nearing its end.
For nearly four days, she’d fled the Silent Fisher. She’d driven it into the wilderness, run from it, summoned up a weapon which could destroy it and then discarded that weapon rather than let it be used. It all made for a neat story, but every story had to come to a conclusion. Hers would end upon the rocks of the Mountain of Light.
The witch dragged herself along the path.
It was more open now, out from underneath the dark canopy of the jungle, and it was only a matter of time before the primal finally caught up with her. She couldn’t say whether she’d make it to the glowing deposits of Dawnstone by then or not.
If Imogen Ward had one natural gift, it was her ability to improvise. She’d always been good at looking at problems, looking at the resources available to her, and coming up with a plan. They weren’t always good plans, but they worked more often than they had any real right to.
This time, though, it wasn’t looking good. If she got to the dragonshards, and if she could tap their power, and if she could control a relevant fraction without being burnt away from the inside out, she would still need to be able to do something with that light.
And she had an idea. Both more and less than an idea, really. Over the last few days of travel, her exhausted mind had devised, as if through a haze of madness, the notion of a spell which could plausibly defeat the primal. It was far and away the most complicated thing she’d ever considered casting, but if she could pull it off…
Well, that was the one problem. It wasn’t going to work.
The spell had a few moving parts. Light, space, control, and investiture. If she had her aether, she could cast each part of the spell seperately, no question. But she couldn’t figure out how she could cast them all together. And it wouldn’t do a damn thing if she couldn’t unify the parts.
Still, she’d come this far. No point in letting the primal kill her without even trying to fight back, was there?
~~~
Walking got harder as the path hit the foothills of the mountain. She was long past the point where her legs ached, and well into the point of trauma where pain receptors simply went dead. She didn’t bother asking Kitty if or when the primal was sleeping; if she lay down now, there was no real question of her getting back up. Frankly, even if she could somehow best the Primal, it didn’t seem likely that she was going to be able to get back.
Well, one unsolvable issue at a time.
The jungle hung like a skirt around the foothills for quite some distance, but the treeline eventually gave out completely. She was tempted to try to use the individual copses of greenery as cover, to get a little more distance- but the fact was, she couldn’t afford to leave the road at this point. It wasn’t paved or anything, but the ancient wear and tear on the path between the center of the isle and the mountain marked out a more gentle path than any other.
“Ho, there!”
A strident female voice rang out from the rocks above, and Imogen’s ears registered the sounds of approaching footsteps. “Are you well? You look terrible!”
Inclining her head slightly, the witch saw that an Orkhan woman was walking down towards her, a look of concern on her face. Two Ecithian men followed just behind, both bearing enormous Dratheran blades. They looked less concerned for the struggling witch and more ready to draw on her.
Tears streamed down Imogen’s face. This was a bitter irony, wasn’t it? She’d almost killed herself trying to draw the fucking monster away from everyone else, and here they turned up anyway.
"Go ‘way," she croaked at the first people she’d seen in days, "Get out of here!"
The woman looked confused, and the younger of the two men stepped forward. “Careful, pilgrim. I can see you’re in a bad way, but we will not tolerate disrespect to the Seer.”
Well, that was the worst joke of them all, wasn’t it? The woman wore no obvious badge of office, but now the witch saw the familiarity between her and her guardians, the same wary bearing she’d seen in the small groups of guardians in Galetira’s temple.
"There is a primal behind me," she hissed at the young acolyte of Raxen, "Leave!"
The two men exchanged baffled looks. The older ork stepped closer and leaned down to get a better look at the witch’s injuries, while the young woman stared at him.
“She certainly thinks it’s true.” the older ork acknowledged. “But we’re on Ailos. There are no primals here.”
The young woman drew closer, causing her guardians to grow tense. “Her aura is very weak. She needs to rest, let’s take her to the old shrine of Ysadre up the-”
The Seer’s voice faded as she noticed the gleaming sword strapped to Imogen’s belt. “That manifestation is drawing power you can’t afford, pilgrim. You should dismiss it.”
"No!" the witch objected, her voice weak, "Breaks the spell, never wake up again."
The three companions stood in bewilderment for a moment before the young Seer shook her head and directed her guardians again to pick up the flagging witch and begin walking back up the mountainside.
Even carrying Imogen, the three made much better time up the mountain than she could have expected while staggering alone. They began to pass the first deposits of Dawnstone, small speckles in the surrounding rocks which gleamed with more than just the reflected light of the sun.
They hadn’t gotten more than a mile, however, before the older guardian spoke again: “There’s something moving on the path behind us.”
The three paused, turning to look. There, at the treeline, was distant movement- something large and dark moving quickly towards the mountainside.
The Seer wasted no time gawking, but turned to the witch slung over her companion’s shoulder. “What is that?”
"Silent Fisher" she replied, breathing a little more easily now that she wasn’t struggling to walk, "Kegumu Rekaka."
There was silence. Then:
“...why is a primal here?”
"I pissed it off, I think." said the witch, reluctantly, "Leave me here and get out of its sight, it won’t follow."
The younger of the two orkhan guardians glanced over at the Seer for confirmation, but any hope he or Imogen had died upon seeing the stubborn look on her face.
“We keep going.”
It was clear to the witch that neither of the orkhan men liked hearing that. Probably it still hadn’t quite settled that they’d run into a primal, but she didn’t doubt that they both realized that this was something the three of them should not be fighting.
“What was your plan?” the woman asked Imogen, bluntly. It seemed she did understand, to some extent, what a problem she’d just stepped into.
"Get to a big Dawnstone." the witch replied. It was easier to answer in short sentences. "I’m a light elementalist. Try to hit it with enough to… get it."
The Seer looked unconvinced by the stratagem, but apparently her divine patron had not sent her here with a better answer. “There’s plenty of the dragonshard around Ysandre’s shrine.”
“Not much cover, though.” the older guard grunted, shifting himself a little to resettle Imogen’s weight. He squinted into the rain-filled grey skies. “Miserable day for a battle.”
Rescued by more divine intervention, a little bit more time.
At this point, she was almost convinced that the little ork witch was going to manage it, somehow. Perhaps she’d free some kind of light spirit trapped in the mountain? Maybe the ghost of Ysandre would rise up to fight the monster? Perhaps it would simply be blinded and fly away, its one true weakness at last revealed?
The conclusion had to come soon, now. The final stage was nearly set.
~~~
The shrine of Ysandre was fairly austere, even for an Orkhan monument. It was made of marble, of course, but only about a thousand square meters, all told. There were no statues inside, but a single bas relief showing the old goddess in her act of sacrifice during the Sundering. It was more akin to a mausoleum than a temple.
The older man unceremoniously dumped Imogen onto a raised table, presumably a place to put offerings–she wouldn’t quite call it an altar–and then went to join his companion at the door, keeping watch on the encroaching Primal’s progress.
“Here we are.” the Seer told the witch, “If you’re going to do something, better do it now.”
Imogen grimaced, struggling even to push herself to a seated position on the table. "I don’t… think that I can even stand."
“I’ll deal with that.” the Seer said, staring intently into the witch’s eyes. “You fix this before it kills them, understand me?”
The witch didn’t feel like she was in much of a position to guarantee any such thing, but it was no use arguing with those eyes. She nodded, and the Seer of Galetira placed a hand on her chest.
There was a strange rush of feelings throughout the Sunsinger’s body. Numb limbs suddenly sparked to life with pain, and then the pain… washed away? Energy ran through Imogen’s body, as though she had just imbibed an alchemist’s draught.
The Seer staggered, pulling away from the witch as she felt the suffering she’d just taken, and- moaning? The poor girl was in so much pain that it almost looked like she was giddy, rubbing both arms and breathing far too fast.
“G-go!” the Seer gasped, shaking, eyes wide. Concern for her guardians, no doubt, and perhaps shame to be observed in the throes of such obvious agony.
Imogen rolled easily off the table, her body again responding to her. There was still pain–quite a lot, actually–but it was of the kind she could fight through, rather than the sort which disabled. She raced for the door of the temple, yanking her sword free of its binding.
It was extremely disappointing for the dream to tear away from the Seer right before it was about to get good, but she consoled herself with the knowledge that Imogen’s next ridiculous coincidence was just around the corner. As she exited the shrine, she saw the primal stalking forward, the two guardians assuming wary stances.
She knew little about the two men, but if they were acolytes of Raxen, that meant they were devoted to the sword. War would run in their blood, studied and refined to its most perfect essence. They would have trained body and mind, night and day, and their souls and swords would strike as one.
That should keep them alive for about half a minute against The Silent Fisher.
The witch exited the dead goddess’ shrine, hoping not to join her. She felt relatively vigorous, but the Seer’s strange blessing had only taken the pain and exhaustion; it had not replenished her lost aether.
A hundred yards away, the two guardians engaged the primal. Their stances were perfect examples of the modern Dratheran style, which Imogen thought was generally superior to most schools of swordplay, and their blades practically glowed with whatever strange powers the Arbiter had imbued them with. They were plainly trained in team-fighting tactics, easily flanking their faster and larger opponent in the hopes of splitting its attention and pinning it down.
In another circumstance, she would have loved to just stand there and observe how master swordsmen approached fighting a monster. But even a moment of inaction could spell their certain deaths, so she instead made a dash for the largest deposit of Illuminite she could see.
One key to using a dragonshard was touch; without that, it was very difficult to create the pathways of intent from user to stone which would result in any actual effect. Here, the Dawnstone was just out of reach, too high to access from the flat rock around Ysandre’s shrine unless she started climbing.
Or.
Imogen pulled her sword back over her head, gripping it with both hands, and chucked it up onto the deposit of dragonshard above. She was her Pact weapons, after all, and she had great experience in using shards through them. The sword arced neatly up onto the jutting deposit above, landing precariously on its side. Wasting no time, the witch ducked and covered her eyes, reached into the stones with her mind and demanded that they bring light.
A blinding flash filled the dream, an eruption of radiance like few alive had ever seen.
It was not remotely comparable to the rites of old, where the power of the entire mountain had been summoned forth, but the outcropping still contained a huge quantity of unrefined dragonshard. The light came from it in such density that it was almost a physical force, rattling pebbles and pressing gently against her flesh. Anyone within a thousand meters who was unlucky enough to be looking directly at the deposit would certainly be blinded forever.
But when, at last, her vision cleared…
The three combatants recovered from the flash at different speeds.
Imogen had timed the effort so that only The Silent Fisher was facing the rock, and so both of the Orkhan men managed to get their wits back first, though the flash reflecting off the rocks around them had still been bright enough to dazzle. Both renewed their attacks on the stunned primal, and accomplished…
…nothing.
Raxen-blessed blades left scratches on the creature’s impenetrable pinions, but neither of the men were strong enough to do the kinds of aphoristic cuts which were the hallmark of the demigod’s practice. Blinking, unable to clearly make out its opponents, the Silent Fisher simply swept them away with its wings, knocking them backwards away from the Primal as it tried to recover its vision.
For a moment, the witch felt some hope that she had, at least, blinded it. Maybe it couldn’t track her, any longer? Perhaps it would be stuck wandering this mountain.
Then the primal blinked, long and hard, and its eyes refocused on Imogen. It began to slowly advance.
It was the ending she’d expected from the start, it seemed.
Well, it shouldn’t be disappointing to be proven right, but somehow it really was. She’d wanted to be wrong. It seemed somehow unfair that she could struggle all the way to the mountain like this and simply die.
But it seemed that there was no great last-second hope hidden here. In the end, it was just going to be the endless dream of flesh being rent by steel, forever and ever and ever and ever and-
She’d come to accept that was how the world worked a long time ago, but something about it made her unaccountably angry. Surely you could have a good ending sometimes? The children didn’t always have to die, or what was any of it really for?
And wasn’t there one person there with the power to change things? Yes, there was.
Imogen stood in front of the advancing primal, bereft of even her sword, lacking the power to call it back. It wasn’t going to be quick, she knew that. She’d been killed by The Silent Fisher before, after all.
She heard movement next to her, and realized that the two men had regained their feet and were maneuvering out to block the Silent Fisher yet again. Buying another few seconds with their lives, that’s all it ever was.
“Can you save them?”
The Seer’s voice, still shaky, came from behind her. Imogen turned her head to see the woman just a few feet away, leaning against the entry to Ysandre’s shrine.
"I’ve got no aether left." she responded, "If I did, I could-"
The idea for the spell flashed through her mind again, but she still couldn’t quite see how to cast it. Still, that wasn’t the big problem now. She had no aether, after all.
“Use mine.” the Seer said, voice steadier now. “Here.”
Imogen felt the woman’s hand on the small of her back, and suddenly felt a surge of energy through her spirit.
It wasn’t a lot of power, in the grand scheme of things. The witch was used to being able to throw magic around like nothing. But it was enough that she could invoke the rune of Traversion. She could save herself and the Seer, jump all the way to the mainland and make a run for the safety of Drathera. She could save the Seer and her guardians, send them safely away to the Temple of Light and meet her fate here, by herself.
…but if she was just a little cleverer than that, maybe she could save all of them.
The witch invoked the runes she’d need in turn, taking her time as death grew closer. Traversion, obviously. Elementalism. Reaving, to alloy the spell. And then…
And then she ran out of power. The Seer’s aether wasn’t going to cut it, and she still hadn’t figured out how to form the substrate of the work. The power roiled within her, lacking any outlet.
Use this.
A new voice invaded Imogen’s mind, almost entirely unfamiliar to her. Through an almost-forgotten conduit came a sudden outpouring of aether, enough to dwarf the trickle from the woman behind her. The witch nearly lost control of the sudden influx of power.
Concentrate. Breathe, like this. Deeply. Do it, or you’re dead.
The witch inhaled deeply- and kept inhaling. The air on the little plateau began to move as Imogen continued to inhale. Beneath her clothes, the rune of Animus flickered to life, all the markings on her body shining.
And then she breathed out.
~~~
When Imogen was younger, her father had taught her about magic. The subject was taboo in Zaichaer, which meant everyone talked about it a lot, but few people had any real knowledge. But Valmont was a Sunsinger, and knew many secret things.
When she was first learning, as a small girl, she could remember asking him:
"Why don’t you just cast a spell to make the Order go away?"
He’d laughed at that, of course, but he treated the inane question with deadly seriousness. Her father had explained that magic is limited by aether, by the channels in which it is cast, by the caster’s will and their connections. The Runes only worked in certain ways, glyphs could only shape energy through certain circuits. And in the end, the magic did specific things to everyone who was caught up in it. You could cast a spell to kill everyone in a room, but you couldn’t simply ‘make the bad guys go away.’
He was entirely right, of course, but Imogen had never quite forgotten that original idea.
After all, what if you could?
~~~
The spell was simple in concept, though not in execution. Through Animus, the witch conjured a fire inside herself, an aetheric organ which converted air and energy to a deadly force. As it formed, the fire was dematerialized and imbued with an extradimensional aspect, Reaving and Traversion infusing the element with the substance of a simple spell. Finally, the fire was converted from one base element to another.
As a result, Imogen opened her mouth as though she were back in Franky’s bar, pretending to be a dragon to entertain children, and exhaled a beam of golden light towards the Silent Fisher.
The light looked like fire, but it was pale and ghostly, and moved far too fast. The witch felt it like any of her Pact weapons, as an extension of self and soul. It was also, admittedly, thin. It couldn’t harm a child, unless they stayed in it long enough to sunburn.
But that was fine.
The primal saw the attack coming; though it wasn’t faster than light, it was fast enough to dodge a telegraphed blast before it happened. Unfortunately for the monster, it didn’t matter. Infused with the energies of a Pact weapon, the beam simply widened into a cone, engulfing the entire area in front of the shrine.
The two orkhan felt nothing at all as the light engulfed them. Guided by the witch’s will, the light slid around them harmlessly. Where it hit Kegumu, however, the light applied an absolutely minute amount of force. Even less than the eruption from the Dawnstone earlier, nothing like sufficient to even slow a primal.
But the tiniest amount of force was all it took to push anything through the veil of Slipspace.
The Silent Fisher found itself suddenly surrounded by golden light. The rocks of the Mountain of Light began to move away as the light carried it gently into Slipspace, the thin window of the portal growing distant. The primal tried to run, to claw at the light, to spread its wings and fly back towards its prey- but to no avail. Surrounded by nothing, Kegumu Rekaka could exert no force whatsoever.
Helplessly, the primal tumbled through slipspace. The light carried it across Ailos and the ocean in a matter of seconds, the ghostly world spinning below it until the Silent Fisher found itself falling out of the sky over Ecith, thousands of miles south.
► Show Spoiler
The light continued to pour out of the witch's open mouth as she bent all of her concentration on the manifold aspects of the spell--keeping it from consuming the two Orkhan guardians, pushing the struggling Primal through, and remaining standing--but she bent her will to avoid causing too much damage to her surroundings. The great bream of light speared away from the mountain, cutting a shallow trench in a foothill and erasing a handful of trees before the witch forced it upward. The spell cut into the clouds above, opening a hole in the rain above the Mountain of Light- and there, at last, it petered out, the energy dissipating above the storm.
Imogen fell to her hands and knees, gasping, as she fought to revert her internal organs to something better-suited for breathing. Behind her, she felt the Seer shudder and fall, landing in a seated position.
The two men looked at the tableau in silence, and then the younger let out a shaky laugh, arms dropping to his sides.
“What was that?” he asked, “Just how did you do that?”
The Seer shuddered, coughing, and reached over to help Imogen to a seated position.
“I think I understand, now.” the Seer said, “Are you the… Great Witch, Imogen?”
"What?" the witch choked out, coughing, "Are you with Norani, or something?"
“No,” the Seer replied, “We’re here with a message from the Senate.”
"Huh." said Imogen Ward, "You have got incredible timing."
~~~
Unseen to the distracted group below, Imogen’s pact sword slowly dematerialized on the rocks below. The spell which had sustained it for seven days had come to fruition, and the magics the witch had cast finally ran their course.
On the other side of Ailos, Deravaecia’s dream ended. She looked out over the beach she’d been staring at for centuries, melancholy. There wasn’t a single outward sign that anything had changed, right up until she suddenly spoke:
But what am I meant to do now?