Heretic Spellblade 8 - Ch3

A roaring inferno crashed into Nathan, surging with white-hot flames that scorched the ground as they passed over it. It washed over his position and streamed across the cavern. When it struck the far wall, the fire blast exploded into searing embers that rained down from the sky.

Nathan appeared on the opposite side of Siv, roughly the same distance away. Charred ruins lay where he had stood. There wouldn’t be anything left if he’d remained there. He grimaced as he felt Artemis’s raw power hammering against his barrier.

His power was far greater than it had ever been, thanks to drawing on this “void.” But it still didn’t give him the strength to take on somebody like Artemis in a one-on-one. If Artemis had some sort of counter to spatial magic she’d have already broken through.

Curious that she was apparently used to hunt prophets. But Nathan supposed her near-immortality sufficed, and Fei had been able to break through Sofia’s golden barriers with ease using Artemis’s power.

Siv whirled, her other horn crusting over with chunks of ice inches thick. A whirlwind of ice formed around her.

Nathan’s hand glowed with black light and he cut off the incoming blizzard with another spatial barrier. It stood as a wall of distorted air between himself and Siv. Ice and snow slammed into it and simply teleported out another part of the barrier.

Snorting, Siv hefted her sword over her shoulder. “Seems you’ve learned a few tricks since we last fought. That barrier’s a lot more complicated than the usual ones I’d see.”

“Spatial magic is about controlling and distorting space,” Nathan said. “A spatial barrier that simply acts as a wall isn’t all that efficient.”

Siv glanced over at Artemis, who was hissing at the spatial bubble that surrounded her and the others. The catgirl’s bushy black tail had puffed up along its whole length.

“Sometimes it’s the only option,” Nathan admitted.

 “Heh. Yeah, fancy tricks don’t mean shit sometimes.” Siv’s sword came down.

He felt the magic gathering around her, too fast for him to do anything about. Hell, could the Twins even stop her? Nathan had ignored the ascended magic school that focused on manipulating magic itself, but imagined it would be pretty useful to stop or slow down a sorceress as powerful as Siv.

A thought occurred to him. Not one he could use, but something he kept in the back of his mind.

Instead, he focused on his own offensive spell. His sword turned black. Siv’s eyes widened at the speed he cast his spatial slash.

The ground rumbled, and a half-dozen rock spires burst from the ground to act as walls. Each stood a good dozen-feet tall and easily as wide, formed from a mixture of the natural stone of the mountain and the molten slag Siv had covered the cavern with.

Nathan’s sword cut through the air across them, even as he scowled.

A thin line appeared in the rock walls. The makeshift barriers began to slide apart with groans that echoed off the cavern walls, and deafening booms as the stone shattered into tiny pieces without Siv’s sustaining magic.

Siv herself bent over, blood pouring from a single long laceration carved across her torso and upper arms. Despite the red gushing out over her uniform, the wound didn’t look deep. Sure, life-threatening for an ordinary human or at least bad enough to permanently scar and put them out of action.

But Siv was a demonic Messenger. More than that, she didn’t die this easily. At least, not at her full strength.

“Not using your regeneration ability?” Nathan asked. His sword began to glow again.

“Ha. Didn’t you know that you need to kill somebody to make them use up a life?” Siv grinned.

He froze mid-movement at the sight of her smile. It stretched across her face, full of excitement and a deep bloodlust that Nathan hadn’t seen on anyone sane. Or at least, not anyone sane he cared to have anything to do with.

Seeing that grin made him question his actions. What the hell was he doing? Why did he want somebody like this monster on his side?

He’d seen the ruins she’d left behind in the Empire and helped thousands of refugees fleeing lost homes while mourning their families. Half of his closest Champions lost something to her. Ciana her mentor and friends. Fei her village, first Bastion, and innocence. Sen had been turned into a weapon who relied on Ifrit for almost everything. They’d all lost their home.

His expression hardened. Siv’s grin turned into a smirk, but her eyes narrowed.

“I know that look. It’s more like you. Determined, zealous, and utterly convinced I’m a monster,” Siv said, her voice cold.

“You are a monster,” he said.

“Because of my appearance? Or are you judging me in the same way you have the two women keen to tear me apart?” She waved a hand at the spatial bubble keeping Artemis and Kadria out of the battle.

Kadria raised an eyebrow, while Artemis growled.

“I’d do a lot worse than tear you apart,” Artemis snapped.

Nathan grimaced. Siv’s words cut deep.

He’d looked past the atrocities other Messengers committed. Kadria had killed everyone he loved.

If he had the time, he’d spend some time considering how he was able to most past the problem and embrace women he should detest. Artemis might be Jafeila, but she had changed utterly in her time as a Messenger.

“Well, at least you’re capable of introspection. But like I said, I’m a simple gal,” Siv said. “I’m here to fight, and doing so with you and maybe under you promises the best fighting.”

“Did you enjoy it?” he asked.

“Fighting you? Depends on the fight.”

He almost asked her to elaborate, then shook his head. “Not that. Destroying the Empire. Slaughtering millions. Burning down villages full of children and memories as you despoiled a nation and doomed a world. Cut down heroes fighting valiantly to protect the only world they’d ever known.”

Siv’s expression turned almost bored. Exasperated might be the better word, he supposed. “Are you asking rhetorically or seriously?”

“… Rhetorically? What?”

“A lot of Bastions do the whole ‘How could you do this, you monster?’ speech before they flip out and I incinerate them from the inside-out. Sofia actually used to keep count, because it entertained her, but it was pointless as the whole infinite multiverse thing makes that impossible.”

He nodded. “I imagine it’s pointless to count something that technically happened an infinite number of times by definition.”

“Yup.” She frowned. “I’m guessing you’re asking seriously. Which is… Huh.” She scratched one horn, and embers drifted off it. “Once, maybe. Not the Empire, though. It’s way too recent for me to have ever cared. I’m not like the Twins and Beatrice, who see all the nobles here as an extension of the wealthy assholes from our original world.”

“But you did enjoy it… once.”

“I was one of the first sent to deal with Sofia,” Siv said. “You know the whole story by now, right? She went rogue, came here when it was ten times larger, and changed the way magic works. Made herself a ‘goddess.’ Boss cut her off, but wanted her expunged. When it turned out she’d infected this entire archetype and couldn’t be permanently destroyed, he erased every instance of the Messenger Sofia from existence across the multiverse.”

“Meaning Sofia, the goddess, is all that’s left as evidence of his failure,” Nathan said. “Why would he want her back?”

Siv blinked. “He doesn’t. Well, except maybe as an undying toy, but I don’t think the boss even has a sex drive. I think he’s just mad that somebody escaped him. But this isn’t what you’re asking.”

It wasn’t, but it interested him anyway. It captured part of the story Sofia herself wasn’t entirely aware of.

“I became a Messenger because working shit jobs to barely make rent is the most unfulfilling existence ever. It was never about revenge.” Siv hung her arms over her sword as she leaned it against her shoulders. “But when all you’ve ever done is pick up the scraps your masters leave at their feet, it’s easy to relish in being truly powerful for once. I get why the Twins went for one final ‘fuck everything’ tour before leaving. Kind of wish I’d done it, just to get shit out of my system.”

“Didn’t work for them,” Kadria drawled.

“Nah, they’re way better than Beatrice.” Siv waved a hand at the other Messenger. “So, yeah, I enjoyed crushing my enemies, seeing them driven before me, and to hear the lamentations of their women.”

Nathan blinked. “What?”

“It’s a quote,” Artemis and Kadria said together.

Then they looked at each other.

“I’ve been around you idiots long enough to know when you’re making some stupid reference to your old world. After the billionth time, it gets old to go ‘what?’ whenever you say some absolute nonsense that has no real relevance to the conversation. Like, holy shit, I don’t bring up weird beastkin customs in random conversation, right?” Artemis scoffed. “You get so high and mighty toward us, but your social skills are nonexistent.”

Kadria’s face turned red for some reason as she struggled for words.

Siv shrugged. “I don’t bother with social skills. But it is fun to see a Bastion or Champion stop dead when you say something they just don’t understand. One of the few things I still enjoy.”

Nathan frowned, trying to make sense of the woman before him.

She’d basically ended his old world. Kurai fell thanks to her. In his mind, Siv had always been the great destroyer.

Now, she stood as a Messenger he planned to defeat by himself, while far greater threats lurked beyond.

“This is why you want to join me. Because you’ve lost your drive for… destruction?” he asked.

“Nothing so grand. I’m bored. You need allies.” Siv lowered her sword, sensing the fight returning to his body. “It’s a match made in hell. No sentimental attachments. Plus, I get to see Sofia finally fall. Maybe I won’t remember after the boss erases me for going rogue, but that doesn’t matter to the ‘me’ that exists right now. That’s it. Getting second thoughts about the deal?”

He had. But she was right.

Nathan needed allies above all else. All of Doumahr stood to be laid to waste by Sofia and the outer beings. Getting Siv to help meant he had the equivalent of multiple new trigems at a time when he was running frighteningly low on new sources of them.

Siv rolled her shoulders. “That’s a better face. Less of the ‘begone evil’ and more of the confident victor who picked this fight to begin with. Now—”

Once again, she hurled an inferno at him. Except flames also rumbled elsewhere in the cavern.

Lost in his questions, he’d failed to notice her setting traps. Siv knew the fight would continue no matter what, even if he’d let Artemis free, and planned ahead. Teleporting away wasn’t an option.

He almost said “no fair,” but that would be childish. This was a battle. One to prove his power to Siv and claim her as a warrior. Fairness didn’t apply.

His mind focused on a spatial barrier, but this one would be different. He’d used it recently, copying a foe who had troubled him greatly.

Nathan’s hand shimmered with the strange black light of his spatial magic and a distorted bubble surrounded him. But unlike the one around Artemis, this one worked differently.

The flames crashed into the barrier. They appeared on the other side. Nathan saw nothing except white-hot flames and death around him, as the stone blackened and pieces of slag turned molten again. A rivulet of molten steel ran into the bubble. It reappeared on the far side of the barrier.

Nathan felt the immense drain of the barrier on his body, but pushed through. Ciana cried out, as if aware of how hard he was pushing himself. Or maybe she worried he’d been overcome.

The flames subsided and he remained within the bubble, unharmed. Impervious, even.

Siv raised an eyebrow. “Neat trick. Seen it a few times before, though. I’m no stranger to spatial magic, you know.”

“I gathered. But I understand why this one gave Fyre difficulty,” Nathan said. “It’s basically a pocket dimension maintained by constantly teleporting away everything that might intrude on it.”

“I don’t care for the mechanics behind the magic, just how it works in reality,” Siv drawled. “Like I said, I know this. Killed my fair share of people who used it.”

That thought from earlier reared itself in Nathan’s mind and internal alarm bells rang out.

Before he could act, Siv’s magic pulsed through the ground.

Then a hole hundreds of square feet wide appeared beneath Nathan, easily thirty feet deep. She’d obliterated the earth itself.

Gravity made itself known and he began to fall. A strangled yell rose in his throat as he tried to focus on his magic. Spatial magic might not help, but he could use wind magic to—

His eyes locked onto the distorted air above him, which was entirely stationary even as he began to fall.

Shit.

A cloud of rock, dust, dirt, and who knew what else began appearing at the top of the barrier. Nathan stared up at it in shock even as he fell. The cloud grew in size with each passing instant. When he looked down to see the bubble’s bottom beneath himself, he understood why.

Siv had destroyed the ground outside the bubble, but couldn’t reach into it. His spatial magic stopped her.

But gravity remained in play. The remaining rock he’d stood upon had fallen, hit the bottom of the bubble, and been teleported to the top. Except it broke apart in the process, creating a fine mist of rock and dirt.

Nathan struck the bubble and his surroundings blurred. Red and black dust filled his vision. Before he could stop himself, he automatically breathed in. He choked on rock. It filled his nostrils and he snorted violently, unable to focus.

Yet he kept falling.

Panic filled his mind. For the first time mid-battle, he found himself almost at a loss. He couldn’t gather the physical or magical focus to cast another spell. Sure, he’d gotten a lot better at spatial magic, but it still took leagues more concentration than flailing about in a mad panic.

Decades of training slammed into his mind, dating back to when Veronica had taught him how to handle runaway magic and misfires.

“When a fire breaks out in a skillet, we smother it,” Veronica said in his mind, from a lesson he’d received when he was only nine and struggling with his newfound magical talent. “The same logic applies to magic. When something goes wrong, the first action is always to smother the spell. You can deal with the aftermath or consequences later, but you’ll be dead if you don’t stop the spell first.”

Nathan hadn’t misfired a spell since his first real battles apprenticing as a Bastion, back as a teenager. But the logic never wavered. The root cause of his problem was his own spell. He needed to smother it.

He reached out and unsummoned the spatial bubble. The cloud dissipated as it crashed to the ground along with him. Groaning, Nathan rolled over and hacked out the last mouthful of dirt from his lungs.

More magic covered his hand, ready to teleport him across the cavern. But no torrent of elemental magic washed over him.

He leaped out of the hole Siv had carved for him to find her chuckling at him.

“Well, you’re smarter than half the foxes that choked to death in their own barrier,” she said.

That thought from earlier…

“You have counters to the foxes, don’t you?” he asked.

“Counters?” She shook her head. “The magic and power of Messengers changes too slowly to adapt to anything. I spent an eternity developing my magic before I came here, so it’s only changed a little. Can’t teach an old dog a new trick. But an old dog can use old tricks to outsmart little shits convinced they’re top shit.”

Nathan grimaced. He’d definitely let his recent growth in power get to his head.

Accepting this contest of power had been the beginning of it. Every fight until now had allowed him to selectively use his spatial magic when it mattered most. In a real fight like his Champions dealt with, he needed to react quickly.

Hell, Siv was giving him huge breaks between attacks. She might have killed him if she used one of her best spells right then.

No, would have killed him. Even Fyre had needed to rely on her impressive regeneration magic after a direct strike from Siv.

“But, yeah, I had to work around the foxes,” Siv continued. “Sofia refined their natural talents to be the most annoying shits ever. Magical disruption meant spellcasting needed to be fast. And their spatial magic makes them nearly impervious to anything that can’t penetrate it. ‘Cept they got overconfident. Those fancy tanzanites of theirs specialize in spatial magic, so they focused on defensive magic. Thought they were gods.”

“Tanzanite? I thought they were zoisites?” Nathan asked.

“They’re the same thing,” Kadria said.

“No, tanzanite is a variety of zoisite. Chemically, what the fox’s have isn’t even tanzanite,” Siv said, suddenly very serious. “It’s just close enough. They called it something else, but I don’t remember. Figures it wouldn’t be called tanzanite, given that’s named after a country from our world.”

Nathan didn’t try parsing her words, but realized Siv knew her stuff when it came to rocks and gems. She did specialize in magic related to the natural elements.

“Anyway, once Messengers started countering the defensive magic of foxes, it was all downhill from there.” Siv smirked. “You’re working with the old fox, right? Heavy drinker, nine tails, huge inferiority complex?”

“Not sure I’d describe Tarako that way,” he said cautiously.

Tarako certainly thought far less of herself than others did, even if she did sometimes act like a brat. Her true thoughts about her power were closer to survivor’s guilt.

“That’s her.” Siv clicked her fingers. “Anyway, she was considered a weak Champion because she’s too offensively minded. Except she’s the last one alive because it turns out the best way to win a fight is to leave your enemy in pieces before they can do anything. She’s half the reason Messengers are so durable now, especially the dominions. Old fox kept turning up and carving everyone apart.”

Well, that explained why Tarako’s Nine-Tail Slash lacked the impact it had in the stories. After millennia of getting beaten up by the bratty fox, the outer beings worked around her.

Nathan brushed himself off while he mulled over Siv’s words.

The meaning behind her actions was obvious. She wasn’t fighting to win. This wasn’t some great battle-to-the-death where he needed to prove he had the biggest magic dick around and was capable of flattening her with his.

Because, despite all the power he’d gained recently, he lacked experience. More than that, he focused too much on a few spells. Spatial slashes, teleportation, and barriers had become his bread-and-butter.

Sure, mono-focusing might be effective, but not even Sofia had relied entirely on spatial magic despite her mastery of it. The Twins used both mental and spatial magic. Thanatos had forged a variety of techniques into his equipment. And Kadria still had some mental magic up her sleeve, plus her life magic made her terrifyingly fast and strong.

“I feel like you’ve already picked a side here,” Nathan said.

A wan smile crossed Siv’s face as she shrugged. “Like I said, I don’t get beaten by the same person more than once. Twice… Well, I knew you were special. And you are. But my worry is that somebody will snap you up before I get a chance to see your true power. Maura and Laura might love worshipping giant cocks, but my interests are more about worshipping giant swords.”

Kadria cackled and Siv grimaced.

“That didn’t come out right.” Siv ran a hand down her face.

“I get it,” Nathan said. “And thanks. I think I know how to end this.”

Siv blinked. Then that rictus grin filled with bloodlust returned. Both of her horns flared with magic as fire and ice curled around one another. The ground cracked as it began to shatter from the extreme heat and cold being applied at the same time.

“Don’t keep a girl waiting,” she growled.

Unfortunately, he would have to for a few moments. In a real battle, she’d blow him away while he reached for his spell.

Of course, in a real battle, he’d have Ciana or somebody else to help him. Despite Siv’s taunting earlier, Nathan was a Bastion. He fought alongside others. This battle might not be a mistake, but it had reminded him not to become so arrogant and think of himself as a god.

He reached for the void, but he wanted a different power this time. Not spatial magic.

Somehow, thinking about a different type of magic drew him “elsewhere” in the endless void he felt when he reached beyond Doumahr’s magical plane. It was difficult to describe.

Did a featureless void even have a sense of location? What differentiated one part of it from another?

Yet the magic he drew on felt different. More refined, and full of whimsy. Even as Nathan held the magic, it felt as if it might leap from his body at any moment, simply because it wanted to.

This felt like the essence of wind magic. Flighty, whimsical, unbound. Holding onto it, Nathan found himself torn.

He’d always considered himself to have a strong affinity to wind magic. That and water magic had always been his go to elements until he switched to using spatial magic more often.

Was he still the same person who had first focused on wind magic all those decades ago? A young boy chafing at the restrictions and expectations his ancient noble family imposed on his.

He took a deep breath then looked over to see Artemis and Ciana staring at him.

Then again, maybe he still needed that whimsy in his life. Things were boring if he let his more rational side run everything all the time.

The magic coursed through his body for a moment, causing his veins to flare with green light. Gasps burst free from the onlookers, except Siv, who narrowed her eyes. She remained stationary. Magic whirled around her, as dense as what Nathan summoned.

Focusing the ascended wind magic—or whatever this power was—Nathan covered his sword and entire right arm with a green light so dense he worried he’d transformed them into magic. Arcs of light whirled off his sword like errant wind currents.

His mind struggling with containing the wind magic, he did something foolish.

He cast a teleportation spell using his other hand as a focus. Siv barely caught the flash of black light and her body tensed.

Nathan blinked in front of her, directly inside the whirlwind of ice and fire she had summoned. Siv bared her teeth at him. Lava congealed at his feet, only a foot away from her. The geyser would vaporize him if he let it. Walls of ice sprung up beside him. Ciana’s diamond flared with light as his body shrugged off the extreme weather.

Ignoring them, he instead slammed his sword into Siv’s body. Power rushed through his veins as his muscles bulged. Her armor yielded to his blade as he thrust it through her heart in a single impact.

She grinned. “Nice start.”

“You should congratulate me on the finish,” he said.

His wind spell flared. Pain assaulted Nathan’s body as his right arm nearly tore itself free from his body. He rocketed a hundred feet along the ground of cavern with his sword buried inside Siv, shattering the ice wall behind her and beyond the lava geyser that vaporized the air where he’d once stood.

Blood exploded from every orifice in Siv’s body. Her eyes, nails, mouth, ears—if it contained a protrusion into her skin, it bled. She gurgled something amid the fountain of blood pouring out of her.

Then lava poured from her wounds in place of blood. It rapidly hardened, forming a solid shell of rock around Siv’s body.

Except Nathan’s sword was firmly inside her and the shell. And his wind spell continued to exude raw power.

When the shell shattered, Siv looked good as new. Unharmed, save for the sword in her chest.

Before she could say a word, Nathan unleashed another pulse. They shot across the cavern floor again. His bones shook from the backlash of the spell. Siv’s body exploded from the inside again as his wind spell obliterated her internal organs and muscles.

Once again, she regenerated.

His spell remain intact, sword still in her chest. The magic thrummed, sending eddies of air and dust whirling around them.

Siv raised a palm. “Wait.”

He paused, but looking down at Siv, he nearly used his spell anyway.

For just a moment, he remembered the monster he’d fought twice before. Who had destroyed so much and killed so many.

But he stayed his hand.

“That’s a good face,” she said, looking up at him. “But if you kill me now, you won’t get that prize. I doubt I’ll get sent back and this version of me will be destroyed given what I’ve offered to do.”

“So you can only do this twice?” he asked.

“Maybe.”

He nearly cast the spell to test her resurrection ability.

“But I’ll take my loss fair and square this time,” Siv said, her eyes boring into his. “I’ve never been defeated by a solo Bastion before, and now you’ve done it twice. With this strength… Well, I can guess why my boss is so interested in this new cycle you’re creating. No wonder Atlas is sneaking around.”

He ignored the comment about Atlas. Nathan had only one thing in mind.

“You said you’ll fight for me,” he said.

“And I will. You need Sofia gone, right? And there are a ton of Messengers about to ruin all your plans.” She smiled, and it actually reached her eyes. “It’ll be a battle unlike anything else I’ve fought in… too long. Something new.”

“I can’t trust you.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. All bosses need to work out how to handle their employees.”

“Most employees can’t destroy cities and end a world overnight,” he said.

She grimaced and looked down. His sword remained planted in her chest.

Realizing this, he pulled it out. Blood dripped out, but she cauterized the wound with magic.

“It’ll heal given an hour or so,” she said. “I don’t have active regeneration magic, but anything that doesn’t kill me is gone within a day at most. Assuming you give me that long.”

“I do. But you won’t like how I plan to do it,” he said.

He placed a hand against the side of her head. Surprisingly, Siv didn’t lean away or flinch.

The draconic Messenger stared up at him, resigned. “I saw this coming. There’s too much at risk. Do what you need to do.”

His fingers pressed against her temple while stray embers burned out against his jacket’s sleeve.

Seconds passed. He did nothing.

“Do you promise to serve me to defeat my enemies until things are genuinely peaceful?” he asked.

“Not planning to keep me forever, huh? That was the deal,” she said.

He nodded.

Then he unleashed his mental magic on Siv’s mind to bind her to him, just like he controlled the Twins.

- - - - -

Commentary: Bit of an unexpected delay as I fiddled with how I wanted the opening chapters to play out, particularly given some of the negative reception over Nathan fighting/recruiting Siv (but there are also broader things I'm worried about, such as the general feel of the opening chapters if they're too action heavy).

Anyway, Nathan's growing in power and skill quickly, but he's at that point where he needs to start mastering new tricks instead of constantly spamming the same ones. They won't always work. So a bit of a learning moment in the fight. Also a reminder of why Messengers can be so dangerous.