Fated (Chapter Seventy-One)

[tanadin]

 This and seventy-two were originally meant to be one chapter, but it would probably be way too long. So enjoy this chapter that Seven really, REALLY wanted to write instead of me but I wouldn't let him.

Chapter list: http://tanadin.dreamwidth.org/382.html
Map of the continent: http://tanadin.deviantart.com/art/Fated-map-544073443
Character status spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RKoeOLYhQctmZ5McNHc_kid0tjfb1BxyuD8i95FmFQE/edit?usp=sharing

Chapter Seventy-One

Kingdom of Kalt’on, Minecraftia. November 13, year 573. Time instance 483Z.

It wasn’t long until the Sandbreakers reached the gates, forcing Alvark to retreat over the inner walls and spit acid at them from above. He didn’t seem to notice that Nessy had ceased circling his head and pestering him, but that would prove to be a mistake.

Nessy swooped into the tower that held the control mechanisms for the gate, killed the three men inside, and flipped the lever.

The wall rumbled and the gate slowly opened, allowing Sandbreakers to come pouring in. One of Alvark’s heads whipped around in time to see Nessy leave that tower and descend upon the other, controlling the far gate. He roared and raced after her, spitting acid and only succeeding in melting some of the stones of the tower.

He roared louder when the second gate opened and Nessy immediately resumed her attack on him, Mokdal and several Sandbreakers not far behind.

Fortunately for Alvark, another Hostile had heard his distress signals and had felt the death of Spalor. The darkness near the citadel hissed and warped, forming both Specterveil and Shara in the courtyard.

“WHAT IS GOING ON?” Specterveil demanded.

“We are under attack, you great idiot!” Alvark hissed. “Spalor has already been defeated and we are about to be overrun!”

Specterveil roared and his hands began the glow, causing the shadows around them to shake. Shara charged into battle even as monsters formed in the darkness, charging out to meet the Sandbreakers in open combat as the sun slipped over the horizon.

Specterveil vanished into the shadows once more, likely to gather more reinforcements, but Iirkolav wasn’t waiting that long. He motioned for the team standing behind him to follow as he raced out from behind a building and towards the nearest open gate, the one with the fewest Sandbreakers.

None of the Hostiles noticed the small team as they darted across the courtyard towards the nearest side door of the citadel, not surprisingly finding it locked. Marcus casually kicked it down and they continued on, fighting off a couple of Kalt’onians that had noticed them.

“Which way?” Iirkolav demanded as they came to a room with two hallways and a staircase.

“The king will be at the top.” Voryn informed him, raising an eyebrow. “Haven’t you ever dealt with kings before?”

“Another version of me was one, but…”

“Pardon?”

“Nothing. Let’s go.”

Nia laughed quietly to herself as they quickly went up the stairs, dealing with any Kalt’onians they encountered with no problems. Interestingly enough, there were a few monsters roaming the halls as well, which were dispatched with even less empathy than the humans. An arrow from Nia sent a zombie flying out a window to the courtyard below, which she thought was pretty hilarious, until someone below noticed and shouted something to Alvark which seemed to convince him to stop attacking the Sandbreakers and start climbing the walls of the citadel, ascending towards their position.

“Dammit, Nia!” Iirkolav snarled.

“I didn’t know that would happen!”

“Shut up and just book it!” Marcus yelled, racing down the hallway and out of sight of the windows. The others followed his example, beginning to head up the stairs even as the hallway behind them was smashed by a very angry Hostile.

They found themselves one floor above him with no stairs up and nowhere near the top, in a hallway filled with Kalt’onians.

“Well, fuck.” Marcus prepared to dash in, but Onai raised his hands and what appeared to be a tendril of darkness swept from the shadows to knock the soldiers into the wall and out the windows, hard. A second, smaller, group appeared as Alvark climbed up to their level, and as Onai tried to remove them the same way, his darkness powers seemed to hit some interference, hesitating and not moving as one of the Kalt’onians raised her hands.

She was dressed in different colors, Onai noticed, with purple accents instead of gold. He looked into her angry purple eyes, so unlike Nessy’s, and had a funny feeling that she was a shadow elementalist.

Darkness elementalists and shadow elementalists either got along or they don’t. Similar elements, separate styles.

If that hadn’t been a clear enough sign, she stepped backwards into the shadows and vanished. The others couldn’t see her as they engaged the soldiers, but Onai could sense her, even if he couldn’t hit her. He dodged a swing of her blade as she appeared once more and swung his own sword only to be parried. He rolled out of the way of Alvark spitting acid at him and tried to throw the shadow elementalist out the window again. She grabbed him with the shadows and he resisted being pulled, but she had greater control as she was out in the night, leading to Onai slowly sliding across the room.

Axid seemed to realize what was going on and moved towards him but he shook his head, shouting to her. “Leave the shadow elementalist to me! You guys keep going!”

“Are you fucking insane? You need backup!” Nia shouted to him.

“I’ll be fine!” He flashed a reassuring glance at Axid before turning and flat-out jumping out the window.

The moment Onai was out in the night, the darkness reached out to catch him and slow his fall. He angled himself to land on the roof of a lower level of the citadel, beside the shadow elementalist, and together they stood, watching each other, waiting for the other to strike first.

Onai felt the shadows suddenly move, formed into lances to pierce his skin, and the darkness rose up to protect him. He launched a counterattack, designed to throw her from the roof to the ground, but she stopped that, vanishing into the shadows once more.

That doesn’t work, you know, he thought to himself, I can just sense where you are.

He avoided another strike from her and swung as well, but surprisingly, shadows blocked his stroke and allowed her to get a cut in on his side, leather armor barely protecting him. He hissed in pain, darkness knocking her back and then suddenly holding her feet down, throwing her completely off balance and allowing him to hit her with a strike to the side as well before she freed herself.

The other elementalist’s eyes narrowed and she suddenly threw everything she had at him, shadows descending upon him from all angles, enough to shred any normal human. A shell of darkness formed around him, pulsing outwards as the shadows hit and deflecting the spikes of shadow in every direction. She ducked and was thrown into another wall by a tendril of darkness.

Onai charged her, sword raised to kill, but he was parried and she kicked at his legs ineffectively. Their powers grappled with one another, trying to move the other’s arm or get through the other’s defenses, but they were both about evenly matched and both quite powerful.

The shadow elementalist began to melt back into the shadows, but the darkness shoved her back out at Onai’s command, throwing her onto his sword. She howled in pain and swung at him in some level of vain, the darkness disarming her relatively quickly. She managed to melt away, however, reappearing a roof away and drinking a healing potion. The shadows threw her sword back to her and she turned to Onai, having the higher ground and now being even less injured than he was.

“It’s a shame you’re so insistent upon killing me. You’re really good.” Onai called to her, even as he attacked her with more tendrils of darkness.

“I could say the same about you!” She called down. “But you’re pretty insistent upon killing my king, and I can’t allow that.”

“I can understand that. I suppose we’re destined to be enemies.”

“I suppose.”

Onai had the darkness wrap itself around him and fling him to the upper roof, rolling to break his fall and standing up to face the shadow elementalist, now on even ground. Their eyes met, rust and amethyst, and they moved, shadow against darkness, blade against blade.

The most interesting thing about an elementalist is their soul; they use their soul when using their abilities, dictating how they do things and what specific powers they do and do not have. When two elementalists fight, they learn a lot about the other’s soul, especially when they are evenly matched and the fight goes on and on. It’s one of the reasons that elementalists are sometimes hesitant to use their powers around others, specifically people they don’t know.

And when you look into someone’s soul, and they look into yours, a certain level of respect can sometimes form.

Their fight, to an outside observer, appeared more like an elaborate dance with blades, parrying and dodging as if rehearsed, the night swirling and moving around them, battling against itself and the combatants, but never out of beat of a song that none could hear.

Eventually, they seemed to slow, the cost of all that elementalist magic finally kicking in and their energy levels growing low. Onai’s feet were heavy and he felt about ready to drop, but he wasn’t about to give up. He could see that his opponent was tired, as well, and also bleeding from a cut he had managed to deliver. They both were stained red from their own blood, none of their wounds major but the blood loss was finally starting to get to them.

The shadow elementalist seemed to realize this as well and her eyes narrowed, the shadows drawing closer around her and Onai paused, awaiting whatever it was that she was about to do. He could tell she was hesitant, not wanting to do whatever she was preparing for, but she was determined.

But so am I. Instead of waiting for her to do what he was pretty certain she was going to do- play on his fears, a signature shadow ability- he jumped at her, the darkness propelling him forward, and slammed into her. As he had suspected, she was helpless while trying to form that kind of attack, and was thus easy to knock into the wall, hard. Her power faltered as her concentration was lost.

The darkness disarmed her, flinging her blade off onto the ground far below, and she didn’t even try to resist as Onai’s sword flicked out and paused at her throat.

Both remained there, breathing heavy as they watched each other, both knowing the fight was over and who had won.

“Well?” The shadow elementalist finally mumbled. “Are you going to end it or are you going to stare at me until we both bleed out?”

Onai watched her for a moment more before shaking his head, sheathing his sword and sitting beside her. She looked at him like he was insane as he took out a healing potion, drinking half of it before offering it to her. She hesitantly took it, but downed what remained at a nod from him. She sighed in relief as her minor wounds patched themselves as she handed the empty bottle back to him.

“Why?”

“Because you’re not a bad person.” Onai told her. “And neither am I. We’re caught on opposite sides of this war, but that doesn’t mean that we have to die.”

She nodded and fell silent, but Onai wasn’t done.

“What’s your name?”

She looked up. “What?”

“Your name. I’m wondering what it is.”

“…Kera.”

Onai held out a hand to shake. “Onai.”

She looked at his hand for a moment before shaking it. “Thanks for not killing me, Onai.” She hesitated. “Don’t you have friends to help?”

“Yeah.” Onai looked up, at the higher levels of the citadel. “I just don’t think I could get up there at the moment, and even if I could, a zombie with no limbs could off me. I need a bit of time to rest.”

Kera nodded, and they fell into a companionable silence, allowing their energy to slowly rebuild, until Onai eventually stood up. “It was nice to meet you, Kera. Hopefully we can meet again under better circumstances.”

“I hope so.” Kera agreed. Onai focused his darkness powers and launched himself upwards, aiming at the highest window on the citadel, where he was almost certain the king was. He felt an additional push and looked down, seeing the shrinking form of Kera focusing her shadow energies to help him ascend. He smiled slightly as he leveled out with the window and the tendrils of darkness latched on, holding him outside the window as he peered in.

He did not like what he saw.

Oh, shit.

-~-

Vechs looked up at Mhykol after looking between the two orbs, ending up more focused on Mhykol’s than his own due to the massive battle happening there.

“That. Was. AWESOME!  Your descendant KICKED ASS!” Vechs bounced excitedly in his seat before looking back at his own orb and freezing, seeing the kind of situation Nia was in. His enthusiasm melted away faster than a snowman in lava as his eyes widened.

“Oh no oh shit oh fuck.”