Mage Steel: Alice 1

ONE 

Across the lavender-fuchsia sky it stretched out across the horizon, tentacles slapping across the fading shield generator of the floating city, sparks of lightning leapt from the shields as they reacted against the great rift beast. Alice couldn’t look at the great monstrosity for more than a moment before her attention was drawn back to her current opponent. 

A gas bag of toughened leather with a dozen segmented slashing limbs advanced on her, floating a few inches off the ground as it spun around in a whirl of screaming scythes. Air tore as the creature's dozen eyes glowed with amber fire, its three mouths opening, each one spitting out a different attack. 

With instinctive reflex she reached for her most familiar rune, the one that she had built her entire life around. Regrowth. It leapt forward as easy as ever, beginning to materialize behind her. Pressure slammed into her metaphysical sense, a weight that pressed on the back of her mind. The forming rune sputtered and faded away. 

“This bitch.” Alice shot a glare back and Daniur who was standing atop of a tower, perched on a lightning rod. One of Alice’s rune fragments flared and her eyesight sharpened enough she could see the ancient being staring at her with a single arched eyebrow. 

Alice gritted her teeth and pushed down her annoyance as she flashed forward, letting her enhanced eyesight fade away. The twin black axes she’d earned with blood flashed, glinting as they slammed into the strong limbs, a shriek of metal and sparks shot out as the monster stopped dead in it tracks. 

Never slowing down, Alice bent at the waist as a burning heat of purple-flame speared over her, blistering hot. She threw herself to the side as the monster slammed down four of its limbs, denting the dense metal of the floating city. She rolled, popping to her feet just in time to see the next attack coming, a wave of supercooled air that sent a spiral of icicles across the metal as it raced toward her.

A fragment flared over her finger, Burn. Energy raced out of her as she pressed the fragment to its fullest ability, air shimmering for a moment before a blast of red fire leapt out from her to overwhelm the freezing attack. Steam exploded with a burst of pressure; Alice rode it out, throwing herself backwards with it to escape the final attack, a corrosive wave of acid. Metal hissed and popped where she had just been, bubbling as the noxious green cloud settled. 

“You’re annoying,” Alice growled as she activated three more rune fragments at the same time. Weight, Fire, and Pressure. The beast froze as a crashing weight pinned it down, pressure squeezing its limbs tightly together just in time for the blast of fire to spear through its center. 

The rift monster popped, deflating as its entire body folded inward, clattering to the ground in a heap of glowing limbs. Alice stalked forward to it, ignoring the painful heat as she reached down and plucked out the D-Grade stone from the center of its remnants, tucking it into a pouch on her waist. The pouch was already bulging with taken stones, dozens of the monsters pouring forth from the rifts that had opened beneath the floating city in the actual gas giant. 

“Area cleared,” Alice reported, the communicator on her borrowed helmet gave a brief hiss of static before Daniur’s voice filled her ear. 

“Only one time, this time. You’re improving.” 

“You going to kill that monster, or let it eat the city?” Alice asked as she started to jog toward the center of the city. The natives were a mix of races who had come together to build the city, including the shelters the entire population were hidden inside.

“It takes time to prepare this technique. Especially when I have to repress my disciples' bad habits,” Daniur retorted, wry humor in the old woman’s voice. Alice looked over to the old woman as she drew her sword, blue lightning starting to coalesce around her, bolts of it sparking off her as she pointed the tip of the sword at the colossal creature. 

Alice could feel the peak C-Grade creature’s presence pressing down on her, trying to force her down to the ground. Her mind frayed, struggling as the swirling mass of tentacles opened to show a single orange eye, black slit pupil filled with burning stars. She felt herself being drawn in by the gravity of the creature’s eye, a black hole that sucked her in. 

“Are you ready?” Daniur asked, a hint of glee in her voice. Alice looked up to watch as the half thousand bolts of lightning slowly were sucked into the steel blade, glowing incandescent white. Daniur gave a precise thrust, snapping her arm forward and releasing a bolt of energy as thick as a battleship. 

The world turned white, Alice’s hair rising as the bolt shot straight toward the center of the mass of the creature. The bolt cut into the creature’s eye, piercing the constellation of stars as it drove deep. An explosion detonated within the depths of the monster’s eye, a supernova of power. 

Alice’s mouth went dry as the peak C-Grade blew apart, hundreds of tentacles falling apart, sliding down the dying energy shields, blood sizzling on the shield as the remnants fell into the heart of the gas giant. Floating in the afterimages of the explosion was a nebula. The empty center collapsed inward rapidly, drawing forth the thick gasses of the planet, a wind howling across the deserted streets and threatening to pull the oxygen out of her lungs.

A blast of power radiated out of the nebula, air cracking like a whip as a floating stone formed. Viridian it glowed with an inner light like a sun, a thousand facets of geen, the power of it easily felt. Daniur flicked her wrist and a lasso of crackling light wrapped around the C-Grade stone, drawing it through the air to arrive at the old woman’s hand in an instant. 

Daniur looked over to Alice, took a step and flashed in a burst of light, appearing in front of Alice with the massive stone in her hand. The weight of the stone’s presence was intoxicating, a headiness that filled her and made her want to stagger away, euphoric. 

“You have so many bad habits. I don’t know how your instructors allowed you to just stand there and get cut apart like that,” Daniur said as the two of them started toward their ship. 

“My fighting style is built around having others with me. And having a thick level of plate metal.” 

“You’ve said that repeatedly. Standing still and getting chopped to pieces is dumb regardless of what you’re trained to do. You are getting better about not instinctively using it to keep yourself alive.” 

“She’s right. I got lazy and built bad habits.” 

“Maybe you’re right,” Alice admitted. Daniur froze and stared at her, eyes wide as a mocking smile stretched her face.

“You are by far the most stubborn student I’ve ever had. This is an excellent first step for you. Breaking through the walls of your stubbornness has been a process. Now that you’re more open to our training I think we can begin,” Daniur said, bouncing the core in her hand. 

People had begun to emerge, some silent alarm alerting everyone that the threat had been neutralized.  The D-Grade rifts below the city would be easy enough to pacify by the local sect, it had been the floating C-Grade that had caused everyone to retreat, too powerful for anything the city had to defeat it. 

“Are you sure you don’t want to ransom at least part of the city?” Alice asked, her instincts coming to bear. Daniur sighed and shook her head in dismay as they found their ship, settled on an emergency landing pad. 

“A good deed needs no repayment,” Daniur said as she opened the ship with a small control. 

“Doesn’t need to be repaid. But it’d be nice to be repaid,” Alice grumbled as she walked onto the ship. 

“Now that this distraction is over, we can focus on what we set out to find,” Daniur said as they entered the Ulmna woman’s ship. 

“The wolves,” Alice said as she set her axes down in the weapons locker near the entrance. 

“Lupine beasts slaughtered my family. I will erase their bloodlines,” Daniur said and Alice felt a chill roll down her spine as for a moment the cultivator was gone, a storm boiling with wrath in her place. Then the moment was over and Daniur was back, tossing the C-Grade stone in a locked container already brimming with harvested cores. 

Alice untucked her own pouch and placed it in her locker, nearly three times the size of Daniur’s but worth less than a fraction of the single C-Grade stone the old woman had just harvested from the tentacle horror. Alice flopped down onto her seat, letting her legs sprawl in front of her as Daniur checked the communications array, smiling as she did so. 

“Stopping here was fortuitous. A relay just connected to us and it seems your protege has found his own old monster.” Daniur frowned and touched at her side, above her hip.

“Not who I wanted Diur to meet, but he is more than welcome,” Daniur said after a moment. She shook her head as she scanned the rest of the messages before shaking her head. 

“Diur and Kon are alive and being trained. That is all we need to know for now. I am sure that ancient creature will create something magnificent from them,” Daniur said, but Alice had a sinking feeling as she realized the ancient cultivator was trying to convince herself. 

“Who is this mentor they found?” Alice asked. 

“I don’t know him well, he was old when I was young. I contacted one of his disciples, Lero Ran, to see if he could intercede.” 

“I know that name, where do I know that name?” Alice froze as the ship began to power up, engines purring softly as it started to rise. 

“How do you know the High Inquisitor?”