Mob Sorcery 5 - Ch38

Note: Chapter 34-40 are being posted together. Be sure not to read them out of order. Commentary will be in Ch40.

Vince’s flame laser struck Kigenai the same instant indigo arcs of lightning erupted from the mirror and consumed her in a blinding flash.

Pola darted backward, still covered in a mass of wind magic that sped up her movements to an absurd degree. Sweat poured down her face and even soaked into her clothes. She downed a magic-restoring infusion before coughing.

Vince had never seen her use such a spell before. It had to be an empowerment spell of some sort, and one she actually cast instead of a tool. Or else it wouldn’t be using her magic.

His mind filed it away as a mystery for later. Kigenai roared in triumph from within the lightning storm she’d created.

Everyone circled her, save Fia who lurked by multiple overturned truck trailers. Hamelin’s phantoms began moving again, and the mist rose from the ground as her flute music wafted over the scene.

“Stupid, foolish woman,” Kiyoko muttered as she hovered in the air.

She’d refused a healing infusion from Vince and appeared to be far from her best.

The lightning storm died down, revealing Kigenai’s ideal form, as Kiyoko had said it would. The Qilin stood with her arms raised to the sky. Lightning ran up and down her body, crackling and arcing at random.

High above in the clouds, the weather rapidly took a turn for the worse. The rain thickened. Fat drops splattered against them and began to pool in puddles amid the craters. Thunder boomed and lightning sparked against the many high rises in the distance.

Staring at Kigenai, Vince understood why Kiyoko never expected her to cast the Mirror of Dangun.

Kigenai remained as tall as usual, but only because of a noticeable hunch in her back. Prismatic veins marred her solid purple eyes. Black streaks ran along her silver hair, and it lacked the perfectly straight quality it usually had, instead appearing ragged and torn. Purple eye shadow ran down her face like tears. A torn and cracked set of tarnished bronze armor covered her body, as if she’d put on a set found in a museum.

But her horn showed the worst damage of all. Her single twisted gold horn now split into a half-dozen branches, each a half-foot long and arcing lightning between them. None possessed a point, however. Someone had cut off the end of each horn and filed them flat. White bone showed beneath the gold and where the horn had been broken.

Her hands still to the sky, Kigenai tilted her head back.

“Hwanin!” she roared, voice distorted and crackling. “Witness me! Beneath your storms and wielding your thunder, I still stand for you.”

A pained sigh escaped Daji. “So she doesn’t get it.”

The sky crackled with lightning, almost as if answering Kigenai’s plea. But the flashes remained in the sky or only struck skyscrapers. Kigenai shook.

“Hwanin?” she shouted, almost pleading.

“Put her out of her misery,” Daji said. “There’s nothing more pitiful than a dog who doesn’t realize her master has abandoned her and will never return no matter how faithfully she waits for them.”

“What is a servant without a master,” Vince said, repeating Kiyoko’s earlier words.

Kigenai’s head snapped to face him. Even with her eyes nothing more than solid balls of color, he saw the madness within them. This spell had consumed the Kigenai he’d come to know over the past few months.

“Vince, do not underestimate her,” Kiyoko gasped out.

“After all this, it’s harder to overestimate her,” he said.

Kigenai roared, and it sounded like a loudspeaker screeching static.

A second later, she blinked in front of him, streamers of lightning arcing behind her. He barely managed to blink before her palm strike exploded against his barrier. A purple backblast exploded twenty feet backward, and he gasped as something tingled inside his body.

His barrier cracked, and he grimaced.

“Weakness,” Kigenai breathed.

He expected her to slam her fist into him again. Instead, she moved at normal speed. Her hands closed around his upper arms. Her slow deliberate movements told him that, even through her madness, she knew about the weakness of his barrier.

“I shall excise it for Hwanin and the kumicho,” she said.

“Vince!”

He wasn’t sure who shouted his name. Several voices, probably.

A bolt of lightning descended from the sky and exploded around them. It pulsed through Kigenai’s body, pumping through her arms, and into her hands. A half-dozen spells crashed over the Qilin’s back, but her entire body glowed with enough magic to act as a barrier.

Except Vince stood there, unharmed. Cracks covered every inch of his barrier, and he felt that strange tingling again, as if she’d tried to stop his heart.

Kigenai blinked down at him in surprise.

“I’ve been training,” he said.

Then he activated his teleportation ring and sent her thirty feet away. A barrage of fire exploded on her the moment she reappeared.

Before he could coil his dragon around his body, Pola whisked him up while running at a thousand miles per hour. She crossed half the parking lot before dumping him on the ground.

“You’re alive!” she gasped out, still straining from her spell.

“Talk later,” he said.

He quickly banished and recast his barrier while Kigenai was distracted. The others closed in, spells at the ready.

Kiyoko’s wings flapped and gouged more lines in the scarred concrete. Kigenai summoned a sheet of lightning to deflect the attack, but it still blew through. Her body glowed with purple light where the wind blades struck her.

Nina slammed her gauntlet into the ground again, blasting a small circle of concrete into explosive pieces. She followed through by charging Kigenai. Fists of earth shot out to immobilize her foe, while amber energy gathered in her veins.

An electric sword met Nina’s gauntlet, breaking her barrier. Nina gasped when the sword dug into her focus, and she tried to pull away.

Kigenai blinked forward and grabbed Nina’s head. Lightning slammed down from the sky. Vince’s heart stopped.

Nina lay on the ground, prismatic light shimmering around her. One of her rings glittered. It had activated a contingency barrier at the last second, reducing her wounds to crippling rather than fatal.

Solid light slammed into the Qilin as she raised her sword for a coup de grace. Gaby gripped both of Kigenai’s arms and rammed her boot into her stomach. The explosive blast of light rippled around the unicorn, but did little more than crackle against the Qilin’s barrier.

Kigenai slammed her forehead into Gaby, cracking her barrier. She grunted and blinked backward. Her bow appeared in her arms again, but far bigger and less controlled. The first arrow looked more like an actual arrow, and let off arcs from her horn and body.

Before she loosed it, Ashley ripped through the concrete behind her in a screaming charge. Blood-drenched claws dripped from her arms.

She rammed the claws through Kigenai from behind, obliterating her barrier. Everywhere the blood touched melted, letting off prismatic steam.

An indistinguishable screech of fury escaped Kigenai and her horn turned solid purple. She slammed an elbow into Ashley.

A solid beam of lightning turned the fox demon’s torso into ash. Shock gleamed in Ashley’s eyes as her blood claws burst, blowing apart her arms along with Kigenai’s stomach. Purple light immediately filled the Qilin’s body, but her legs began to flicker with magic. Her feet lost their human appearance, becoming that of a deer while being formed of light.

Unlike during the heist, Kigenai didn’t collapse, however. She batted Ashley away with far less force than usual, leaving her sprawling on the ground.

“I… I return to you as a spirit,” Kigenai breathed out, her true voice leaking out through the crackling.

She raised one arm, and a lightning chain appeared in it.

A golden barrier appeared over both Nina and Ashley, and barely withstood the first lashing. Gaby stood behind it, arms outstretched. Her horn shined like a sun and sweat dripped off her face. Utter determination filled her face.

When the chain fell again, it crashed against Vince’s dragon.

“Get them out, Gaby,” he ordered. “Pola, you need to—”

“I’m not leaving,” Pola said. Her voice wavered, but she gripped her rapier. “We have to end this now. Or what was the point? She killed Duilio.”

He nearly argued with her, but bit his tongue. She was the sottocapo of the Lionettis, and could make her own decisions.

The fire tornado roared around them, strengthening his dragon. Even so, the lashings of the chain tore chunks away that he still had to replace. Kigenai blinked out of the way of his newly empowered flame laser, but ignored every other spell he threw at her.

Gaby rushed Nina and Ashley away, but Vince knew they wouldn’t be returning to the fight. Not with so little left.

Hamelin’s phantoms swarmed around Kigenai, launching light beam after beam at her. Sometimes they rushed her or emerged from the mist next to her, clawing at her with ghostly hands. Enraged, Kigenai obliterated them with massive bursts of lightning. More phantoms emerged to replace them.

“Kiyoko, I can keep this up, but—” Vince began to say, looking at the tengu floating near him.

“I need an opening,” Kiyoko said. “A single opening, with her barrier down and her stunned or distracted, and I can end this.”

Her katana gleamed, and part of him wondered why she hadn’t used it. Then again, Kigenai had only just reached the very limits of her power.

The Mirror of Dangun had driven her mad, but the strength she wielded was real. Uncontrolled, but real. Even with the fire tornado up, Kigenai fought with the same strength she’d used beforehand, and summoned her spells even faster.

“One opening,” he said, then closed his eyes. “Okay.”

Pola nodded when he looked at her. If he looked at Fia, he worried she’d join in this insane plan.

His dragon raced around Kigenai, dodging a lightning beam she used to blow a hole through the loading dock. She spotted them, and her bow appeared instantly.

Vince gripped his cane and drew on Daji’s power. A flaming cage of black fire snapped up around Kigenai, and its bars captured the edge of the Qilin’s lightning.

The blaze wrapped around her weapon, and then her body. She screamed.

“I am an immortal, and no kumiho will feast on me,” Kigenai bellowed.

A bolt of lightning struck her. Then another. And another. A rumbling force struck the ground, and glowing purple cracks shot across the parking lot. Lightning arced up from the ground, forcing Pola to dash between them as she charged Kigenai.

Acting like a tesla coil, Kigenai channeled electricity from every crack she’d made. She turned into a living storm. Her raw power extinguished Daji’s magic-consuming flames.

Vince sincerely hoped Mei didn’t have a trick like that.

“Her foxfire would achieve the same thing,” Daji told him. “Magic can always destroy other magic, regardless of what trickery I use.”

Kigenai bent over double, heaving while glowing veins of lightning rippled through her entire body.

Pola teleported in front of her. Then barely dodged the upswing of a hastily summoned electric blade.

As the sword came down on Pola, Vince’s dragon crashed down behind Kigenai. Its maw glowed with a dozen concentrated flame lasers.

Kigenai’s entire body shined with lightning and her horn channeled it into her sword. She spun, blade lengthening several feet per microsecond. She’d cast the Sword of Dangun faster than ever before, catching him off-guard.

The flame laser slammed into her barrier, vaporizing it, at the same moment Kigenai split the dragon in two. The pulsating blade of lightning sucked up the magic it touched, easily cleaving through the mass of fire magic he created.

Prismatic light briefly filled Vince’s vision.

Then the parking lot exploded. The shockwave of his dragon bursting apart knocked him down through his barrier, and he heard yelling and screaming from nearby. Every window of the loading dock shattered. Phantoms evaporated into mist.

Pola lay near Kigenai, stunned, but with a red barrier wrapped around her body. A contingency barrier if he guessed. The runes of her new jacket glowed brightly. She pulled herself to her feet. The empowerment spell she’d been using was long gone.

Kigenai kneeled on one leg. She’d lost the arm she used to destroy the dragon, and it hadn’t regrown. A glowing stump took its place.

But when she stood, Vince knew the end hadn’t come yet. Kiyoko tensed, ready to charge in. Kigenai’s barrier remained up, as she’d recast it during the confusion.

A thumping noise echoed across the parking lot, and Hamelin’s bullfolk undead charged out of the darkness. Kigenai casually blasted it with a lightning beam without sparing it a glance.

Except the bullfolk ignored the massive hole in its torso and crashed into her. Its sigils blazed with necromantic magic, burning at the Qilin’s barrier.

“Foul beast!” Kigenai snapped.

She gripped the undead with her single remaining arm and ripped the bull in half despite her lack of leverage. Lightning channeled through its body, which continued to hold onto her despite being bisected. Even as she burned the bullfolk to ash from the inside, it refused to stop.

The barrier weakened more and more. Pola darted in and struck with both her wind claws and vortex.

“Trave!” Fia snapped, shooting off a flame laser as she charged in.

Kigenai snarled and finally separated the bullfolk’s arms from its torso. They continued to grip her, still burning her barrier, but she ignored them as they blackened and charred.

She spun, another electric sword forming. Wind magic allowed Pola to dodge the first swing, but Vince couldn’t block the next.

He needed to focus and resummon his dragon, and downed another magic-restoring infusion to help. His head throbbed and he swore he saw things in his vision.

Fia slid up to Kigenai, and flame blades surrounded her arms. They barely scratched the weakened barrier. But they did distract the enraged warrior.

When Kigenai swung at her, Fia moved with supernatural speed. A pocket watch hung from her clothes, granting her absurd speed for as long as it lasted.

But once again, Kigenai’s sword grew.

“Get away,” Vince shouted.

His dragon roared to life around him, once again relying on Daji’s help. His flame column burst beneath Kigenai’s feet, to no avail.

Kigenai’s barrier had nearly collapsed, but remained just intact enough to ward off damage.

Fia rushed at Pola, tackling her to the ground with the help of her pocket watch. The moment Fia touched Pola, she slowed down.

The crack of Kiyoko’s supersonic flight signaled her desperate attempt to intervene. Her blade swung down at Kigenai’s remaining arm.

But as if expecting this, the Qilin summoned another bolt of lightning. She teleported just a few feet away. A short enough distance to ignore the anti-teleportation wards. Kiyoko’s wind blade carved apart concrete and phantoms, but left Kigenai alone.

The Sword of Dangun descended toward the tengu. Kiyoko rocketed upward, dodging it with ease.

But two wolfgirls remained on the ground only feet away from Kigenai.

Kigenai swept her sword to the side, bringing it down like the godly weapon of destruction it was. Ten feet of barely controlled lightning, eager to tear apart magic and matter alike, descended toward Fia and Pola.

Fia barely got up the triangular barrier before the Sword of Dangun struck it. She kneeled over Pola, eyes wide but determined. Neither could dodge fast enough.

The barrier slowed the sword by the tiniest amount. Wind magic surrounded Pola’s body, and Vince tried to activate his teleportation ring. If Pola could escape, he might be able to save Fia.

Pola shoved Fia to the side, her magic and strength allowing her to push Fia out of the sword’s path in time.

Vince’s ring fizzled out. He’d used it barely a minute ago.

The Sword of Dangun cleaved through Pola. Her scream echoed in Vince’s ears.