Chapter 280: The medium way (Patreon)

On the other side of Suri’s closing portal, I find a small, spherical void that’s free of gravity, bordered by dark Spatial Energy. There’s very little light coming in from outside, but that’s okay. Peilor are their own light source when they need to be.

Not that there’s much to see here either way. The only things this pocket dimension contains are Loudmouth, with Lyrack’s glowing yellow crystal in his forehead, Alec, with Farouq’s deep-purple one, and now Bulging-Eyes, with my unpigmented, dark one.

“So, what exactly am I supposed to see here?” Farouq asks.

In lieu of an answer, I send out a mass of tendrils.

This time, rather than trying to smash straight through my foe’s spiritform to get to his Core, I use them to try and grab a hold of it, so I can drag him out of his crystal, while staying in my own.

Farouq produces a startled noise as my tendrils hook into his spiritflesh and start to pull. However, he offers more resistance than I expect and I can’t quite pull him loose. In fact, judging by the density of his Espir, he’s quite a bit stronger than I expected. From the brief contact, I’d estimate his Pool to be close to 6000 motes!

Of course, that doesn’t mean he’s safe or anything. After all, my Devouring Energy is already digging into him, draining him of Espir.

“Lyrack?! What is your servant doing; it hurts!” Farouq chimes loudly, angrily.

“She’s doing what needs to be done,” ‘Lyrack’ answers cryptically. “Cease your resistance, my friend, it is futile. You won’t be harmed, I promise.”

Keeping our identities hidden for as long as possible is something we decided on in advance. After all, the last thing we need is for Farouq to figure out that our actual goal is Alec, and not him.

This can not turn into a hostage situation, or we’re screwed.

Of course, Farouq does not simply roll over and give up as suggested. Instead, he glows up in a familiar, deep-blue colour.

Inverse Spatial Energy!

Kaitlynn’s crystal immediately lights up white, and she quickly forms a gravitational field around Farouq.

It probably won’t do much, but it should hopefully still hinder Farouq by eating away at the energy he’s gathering.

Despite Kaitlynn’s interference, a portal opens around Alec, and he disappears, the closing of the portal shearing my tendrils off in a painful way.

However, rather than leaving, he simply pops out at one of the edges of the pocket dimension.

It’s working! Nice one, Suri.

I waste no time in lashing out with more tendrils, once more grabbing and trying to drag Farouq out of his crystal.

“Let... go of me!” he grunts, before sending out a wave of Imaginary cold to try and freeze my tendrils.

My purple extremities turn an unhealthy shade of blue as they grow weak and unresponsive.

I respond by channelling a wave of Devouring Flames along my tendrils, instantly heating them back up.

Farouq screams in pain as the purple fire reaches him.

Finally, his control slips, and his spirit gives a little.

A moment later, a deep-purple crystalline spiritform pops out of its shell, dragged out by burning tendrils of Devouring Energy.

Yes!

The main goal of pulling him out was, of course, to deprive Farouq of his Qi and Lavi, arguably his most dangerous weapons.

Kaitlynn immediately seizes the opportunity, and a wave of Momentum sends Loudmouth careening forward wide-eyed, with his arms flapping comically.

He manages to successfully grab hold of Alec, however, even as I continue to struggle with Farouq, who is desperately tugging on his Mortal Tether in an attempt to return to his crystal.

Fat chance, buddy.

Now that he’s been separated from it, I decide to risk it, and pop out as well, to improve my manoeuvrability.

Upon seeing my spiritform, Farouq freezes momentarily, allowing me to wrap my tendrils more firmly around him. “Are you... Emma? The missing human spirit?”

I grin at him. “In the spiritflesh.”

Behind him, I see Loudmouth successfully—if somewhat messily—pluck Farouq’s crystal from Alec’s forehead. A moment later, a portal swells into being around the Hoig, as Suri removes him and Kaitlynn from the equation.

Two more portals follow in rapid succession, removing Alec and Bulging-Eyes respectively, leaving me alone with Farouq and his empty crystal.

That means my own crystal is now outside as well, but that’s fine. I don’t need it.

“Now,” I state confidently. “We can do this the easy way, or the hard way. Your choice.”

Farouq quickly proves himself surprisingly adept at spiritual combat. Unlike me, however, he seems to rely mainly on offensive conjurations.

I suppose it makes a kind of sense for a Peilor; they’re not used to attacking with their ‘body,’ even in spiritform.

Darksteel painting knives and chisels empowered by Willpower swirl around him, working to dislodge and sever my tendrils with varying degrees of success.

At first glance, the difference in our methods might not be obvious, but my Devouring Energy is actually part of my spiritform. Both styles have their advantages and disadvantages. The Espir inside the spiritform is typically denser, and therefore less reliant on Willpower to apply force. However, it’s also more vulnerable, as damage done to the spiritform has a far greater impact on one’s Espir Pool, and can be debilitatingly painful.

But it’s not like I don’t use any conjurations either.

A gout of Devouring Flames bursts forth from my mouth and burns through a bunch of his tools, heading straight for him.

He’s growing weaker. After this one hits, I bet I can enter his—

Suddenly, a canvas strengthened with Mental Fortitude pops up in my attack’s path and slows it down enough for Farouq to dodge. Except he doesn’t just dodge it in one direction, but three. And they’re not conjurations either; he’s actually split apart his spiritform into three jagged shards!

Shit! Which one contains his Core?!

Well, at the very least it’s not the portion he split off with all of my tendrils attached to it, because that one is going nowhere.

That leaves two more, though come to think of it, neither of them can be allowed to escape and possibly alert others to what’s going on here!

All of this passes through my mind in an instant, but just as I’m about to launch my tendrils at the fleeing shards of Farouq, he pulls out another dirty trick, and has the portion I’m still holding onto conjure up a literal smokescreen.

For a brief moment, I’m seized by panic, as I fear he’s outsmarted me and is about to get away. Then I realise the fatal weakness of his ploy.

Barely a second later, a clear chime rings out, as one of Farouq’s crystalline shards bursts out of the smoke and smashes into the Darksteel cage I conjured around the whole thing.

For a moment, my cage creaks and bends as his momentum attempts to carry him through. But in the end, his shard holds too little Espir—in part because I’ve been whittling it away, and in part due to the split—and thus lacks the force to break my cage that’s infused with Mental Fortitude.

Another chime rings out as the second shard meets the same fate.

A burst of Devouring Flames shoots forth from me, and starts burning away the obscuring black smoke.

Burning away smoke may sound counterintuitive—which can actually cause problems when it comes to spiritual combat—but that’s only if you don’t know that smoke is usually actually quite flammable in the Entropic Realm.

When the smoke clears, I find the two shards that tried to escape careening towards each other. My tendrils shoot forward, and snatch both of them right before they can make contact.

Honestly, this was a pretty clever Hail Mary from him, but when it comes down to it, the power gap between us is simply too large.

This time, when my tendrils reach into his shards, I find them weak enough that I can quite easily bore into them. And, as I expected, the shard that was the second to hit my cage contains his Core.

Now, this is where the real fun starts.

A pulse of Willpower rushes down my tendril and slams into Farouq’s Core, with a sound like a bell being rung. It’s much like what I did when I entered Kaitlynn’s Core to remove her Commands, though my goal is different here, of course.

After a momentary resistance, my Espir enters his Core, and I send most of my consciousness in with it, leaving me with only a vague awareness of my spiritform outside.

Inside his Core, I find a decently sized, impressively homogenous sea of purple Essence. One of the first things I notice, in the distance, is a strange spherical barrier, seeming to enclose something.

Is that the Blank Space Technique?

Part of me wants to rush over there and do... something. Inspect it, or infect it with something, even, see if my theory about Starmother holds ground. However, I’m not here to experiment with cloning minds, let alone my own.

Even if I had finished purifying my Essence, that would probably still be a terrible idea. I really can’t tolerate the idea of another me. The memory of Gary, my garish alter ego, really doesn’t help with that.

Shaking off the intrusive thoughts, I turn my attention to my goal in the distance: a deep-purple crystalline avatar, that’s currently flying my way at frightening speed. It fires a beam of purple light which hits my projection of myself in the chest.

I grunt, but another wave of Willpower-enforced Espir flows into me from outside, and helps me to shrug it off.

Tendrils of Devouring Energy reach down into his sea of Essence, find purchase in the thick, syrupy goop, and yank me forward. More attacks come flying my way as I rush towards him, but I brush them off or counter them with my own.

I can tell the exact moment his consciousness descends into his Core, as his avatar kind of.. stutters, then starts to transform. It grows in size, as its shape becomes a familiar mockery of a human body, with distorted limbs of shiny, facetted crystal and a twisted expression of constant agony. However, my own projection is also constantly growing, gaining strength as I feed it more power from my spiritform.

By the time we clash, the crystalline golem and myself tower over the sea of Essence like titans.

Sharp, gleaming claws rake across my stomach, digging into my skin, as I graze its cheek with a right hook, sending shards of crystal flickering off into the distance.

“Emma!” the avatar across from me suddenly roars. “You’ve collected your friend, why must you kill me?!”

“Who’s killing you?” I shout back while I land a devastating kick to his upper thigh, that sends more shards of crystal flying as a spiderweb of cracks spreads up and down his misshapen quadriceps. “I told you we could do this the easy way, didn’t I?”

Suddenly he jumps back, clinking and tinkling like a chandelier attacked by a swarm of rabid bees as more pieces of crystal come free. “Please, do enlighten me,” he bites out, “what constitutes this ‘easy way’ you speak off?”

The web of cracks on his thigh is slowing healing as I take him in, but I suppress my powerful urge to keep pummelling him, and straighten, taking a deep breath. “Well, the easy way, would be for you to surrender, and accept the placement of some Commands.”

His distorted, agonised-looking face tightens, but then loosens again. “Considering how well you’ve cornered me,” he chimes coolly. “My surrender is... on the table. What Commands would those be, exactly?”

When I pull back out of Farouq’s Core, Suri still has the pocket dimension stable around us.

Of course, my crystal is already outside, so it’s child’s play for me to grab my new mortal tether and draw myself out, towards the black crystal still lodged in Bulging Eyes’ forehead, though I don’t actually enter it.

Even if I’d wanted to, Kaitlynn wouldn’t have given me the chance.

“Emma!” she exclaims, her spiritform flinging itself around mine the second I emerge.

“Ah, there you are, dear,” Suri chimes unconcernedly. “And, did you succeed?”

I draw back from Kaitlynn’s hug with a smile. “I sure did. It took some... convincing, but Farouq has accepted the Commands.”

“You don’t sound entirely happy about that,” Suri notes.

“He’s stronger than we anticipated,” I admit with a sigh. “The difference between our Espir Pools is significant, but not sufficient; I’m worried he could grind away my Commands to the point where he could momentarily resist one in a rather short period of time.”

In the end, Commands really aren’t suited for the binding of strong, experienced beings who are aware of their existence.

“Then what are we going to do?” Kaitlynn asks, floating back a bit.

I shrug. “We can’t keep him here, so I figure we get him to sever his mortal tether and ferry him over to the Realm of Imagination. I’m sure Goddess would love another prisoner, and Herman makes a great jailor.”

While I may not be able to properly chain him down with Commands, that doesn’t mean others can’t.

“Does he know the locations of Jacob or Dave?” Kaitlynn asks.

“I haven’t asked yet,” I admit. “But as soon as we...”

My voice trails off as I spot Alec, coming down the stairs, happily chatting with Loudmouth. He stops in his tracks the moment he sees me, his eyes quickly taking on a wet gleam.

Author's note:

Thanks for reading! ^^