Ghost Ascension, Episode 24a
You pull up the cowl of your shadow-cloak.
Your father’s library vanishes around you, replaced by a bleak plain mantled in swirling gray mist, and you remember who you are and how you got here. Your father vanishes as well. And his place stands a thing of horror. You would say it had dozens of eyes, if eyes had yawning, needle-filled mouths instead of pupils. Or that it had tentacles, if tentacles had dozens of grasping, slime-coated hands.
The doorway remains, and you sprint towards it.
“No!” shrieks the thing, and you see it running – or perhaps flowing – after you. “Come to me, my sweet child, my succulent child, come to me, come to me…”
You leap through the doorway.
Then you are stumbling across a floor of polished marble. A broad balcony, jutting from the side of the mountain near the entrance to the Valley of the Emperors. Below you see the great city of Malarae spread around the Bay of Empire, the eastern sky just starting to brighten with the dawn.
Emperors’ Reach. Anacepheon’s spell, it seems, has worked.
You spin, see the column of gray mist swirling behind you, and for a awful moment you think Lucan is still in that terrible place. Your cowl falls back, and you hear your father’s voice, blaming Lucan’s death upon you.
Then Lucan stumbles out, eyes wild, ghostsilver sword in hand.
“Caina!” he says. “You…you’re not…”
The pillar of mist vanishes.
“Gods and devils,” mutters Lucan, raking a hand through his hair. “Did you have a vision…no. Whatever you saw, I don’t want to know, and I doubt you want to know what I saw.”
“Anacepheon wasn’t joking when he said the netherworld was dangerous,” you say.
“He didn’t seem the sort to make jokes,” says Lucan.
A half-hysterical laugh escapes your lips. “No. No, he really didn’t.”
You look around. There’s no trace of Sophia. You wonder if you were wrong, if you didn’t understand her as well as you thought. Then you here the click of heeled boots upon the stone stairs leading to the Valley road.
Sophia comes into sight, bronze longsword in her right hand, the Ascendant Bloodcrystal in her left, the tails of her crimson coat fluttering in the breeze.
Even knowing what it is, you still feel the overwhelming urge to take the Bloodcrystal, to use it.
The voices in your head all start up at once. “Kill her, kill her, kill her kill her KILL HER…”
Sophia stops, stares at you and Lucan. Astonishment flashes over her face, followed quickly by puzzlement and then rage and then by delight.
She almost looks pleased to see you.
“Countess!” she says. “However did you get here? You two are truly worthy foes.” She sighs, as if in satisfaction. “A challenge.” The bronze longsword comes up, the hieroglyphs smoldering, and she walks towards you. “I will remember you fondly, in the years to come. The great work, the mighty art I am about to make in Malarae. I couldn’t have done it without you. You were,” her smile widens, “you were my inspiration, Countess! My muse! You inspired me to greatness.”
“One chance,” you say. “Throw down the Bloodcrystal and go.”
Sophia’s laughter rings over the balcony, wild and delighted. “Do you think so? Do you know who I am, Countess? Who I am truly? How I have moved from body to body for centuries, how I have slain every foe to ever stand before me? For I am Sophia Nikaedes, death victorious…and you cannot possibly stop me!”
She leaps forward in a blur, the bronze longsword swinging for Lucan’s head.
Lucan moves, ghostsilver sword coming up.
Sophia’s longsword, the blade that cut through marble and steel alike, clangs to a stop against the ghostsilver sword.
And for the second time, utter astonishment crosses Sophia’s face.
Lucan counterattacks at once, hilt in both hands as he brings the sword around in a vicious sideways cut. But Sophia sidesteps, her sword spinning in a blinding arc as she drives at Lucan.
And in a heartbeat, two masters of the blade are locked in combat. Sophia is fast, deadly faster, faster than Lucan, and her sword spins and bobs and weaves like an enraged bee. But Lucan is stronger, and he has an advantage – he can keep his hilt in both hands, putting all his power behind his blows. Sophia’s using one hand to hold the Ascendant Bloodcrystal, and must dodge or deflect – she cannot block Lucan’s strikes one-handed.
They are almost perfectly matched. The first one to make a mistake will die.
Unless you can help Sophia to make a mistake first…
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