Morispé Vale. “The Valley of Dying Hopes.”
A vale covered in red flowers, with numerous ancient swords of all different sizes and designs stuck blade-first into the ground. It had a strange atmosphere. To Caleb, what stood out most was a sense that this place was haunted. Not by ghosts, but by the past. By tragedy, by pain, by war. There was a pervasive melancholy, a sorrow that emanated from every ancient sword, from the countless red flowers, from the arching roof of dark, glinting stone.
And there in the center of it, seated on a white stone, was an immortal child who couldn’t read the room. She wore an amused smirk, and her dark eyes glinted with a dangerous, sadistic edge.
Nyx was a mass murderer, one who took pride in all the violence she had committed. It was chilling, since she was trapped in the body of a child — she didn’t look much older than Addie.
But she was a monster. Caleb knew from fighting her in Grimoire, and he knew from Mister Midnight’s stories of her.
“The Valley of Dying Hopes,” Nyx repeated in her silky, sinister voice, casting her dark, predatory gaze on Midnight. “A fitting place to meet your end, don’t you think?”
“It’s not so bad,” Midnight said. He flicked his wrists, and black daggers that crackled with magical energy appeared in each hand. “But sorry. I’m not allowed to die just yet.”
Nyx chuckled. She looked as if she was about to say something…
But that was a feint. A yawning black portal opened up in the sky, and from it shot forth the Beast — Nyx’s vicious, immensely powerful, formless Summon. It was constantly shifting and twisting, a writhing black mass that never took on a single shape or size.
And it charged straight at Midnight.
“Idiot,” Midnight muttered.
He vanished.
An explosion sent out a powerful shockwave that rocked Caleb back on his heels, and knocked Addie flat on her back.
A Phase Step. Midnight had used it to go straight for Nyx, but somehow…
She’d blocked his attack.
Midnight’s daggers crackled and sparked against Nyx’s staff, which she held up with a single hand, a casual posture, a sneer on her face.
“Is that the best you can do?” she asked.
“Lance, not alone!” Mineria called out.
The Beast charged. But not for Lancelot.
For Mineria and Ingrid.
Caleb dashed to protect them, but Lorelei and Chelsea were faster. Walls of cerulean ice went up, and torrents of emerald flame blasted in front of them, scorching the Beast. The roiling black Summon roared with its strange voice, like some violent mixture of audio static, guitar distortions, and nails scraping on a chalkboard. So the Beast could be hurt.
But it didn’t seem to much mind the pain. It charged on, shattering Lorelei’s ice walls and lunging for Mineria and Ingrid.
The dual attack had bought enough time, though. Caleb wrapped the Beast up in dozens of shining white chains, yanking it aside from the pair it targeted. Not only that…
He yanked the Beast straight towards him.
“Come on!” he shouted, a firm challenge. When the Beast obliged, snapping numerous fanged maws that vanished and reappeared all over its body, Caleb sprang up with the aid of a Mobility disc, begging the Beast to follow.
Just like Caleb, the writhing black Summon wasn’t landlocked. It was perfectly adept in the air.
Let’s see who’s faster. Let’s see who’s more agile.
But in case you think I’m an easy target…
As the Beast charged after Caleb with startling, frightening speed, emerald flames blasted against its body, along with wickedly sharp icicle spears.
Caleb grinned.
I’m not alone.
None of their attacks had a great effect on the Beast. Caleb could yank and pull with his chains to adjust the Beast’s momentum, but he could only alter its course by somewhere between ten to twenty degrees, and that took a great effort. His bounce-discs that he sometimes fielded as shields to deflect enemies or attacks shattered in the Beast’s wake, doing nothing to deter it. And his weighted attack chains buffeted the Beast’s body but didn’t do much to faze or shake it.
The same went for Chelsea and Lorelei, their team’s strongest attackers. Ice and fire slashed, pierced, and scorched, but while the Beast roared in pain, it didn’t slow, and it didn’t show any signs of growing smaller, of losing mass from all the attacks. There weren’t even visible wounds on its shifting, ever-changing black body.
It reached for Caleb with half a dozen clawed arms, but Caleb bounced away, rocketing in a different direction. Though he and the Beast were engaged in this deadly aerial dance a hundred feet over Caleb’s teammates, Chelsea and Lorelei were on-point with their attacks, predicting the Beast’s movements so they were always striking at the opportune time, making up for the time it took their attacks to reach it from the ground.
As Caleb zipped around through the air, he saw below that Gwen was weaving a trap, casting out nearly invisible silver thread in all sorts of directions. She’d leave an opening, Caleb knew, and he needed to watch for her signal, to not bring the Beast down to that level until the trap was set.
Will, meanwhile, was backing Mister Midnight up. Midnight dueled Nyx alone, and the fact that she held out against him while the Beast was otherwise occupied was striking. This was the first time that Caleb had seen Nyx fight on her own. Both in Grimoire and at the Radiant Palace, she’d battled her foes while wreathed in the Beast’s shapeshifting mass like a cloud.
But here she was, moving with speed and wielding her staff with strength enough to handle even a master of Time Magic.
How does she do that? How can she be so fast that she can handle someone who can slow or even stop time?
But Caleb had seen that kind of speed — no, not just speed, but freakishly accurate levels of prediction — before.
Stride.
Caleb had tried attacking the swordsman in Time-state, but even with time slowed to a crawl, Stride had been able to track his movements, to prepare for and counter every single possible avenue of attack that Caleb could take.
He’d cut him off before Caleb had even attacked. There was nothing at all he’d been able to do.
But Mister Midnight Phase-Stepped to reach her. How can she possibly counter that? Time stops when he does that. No one can move fast enough to defeat that kind of attack.
What kind of power is she wielding?
That was when things became more clear to Caleb. He’d been sorely underestimating Nyx. Summoners in Grimoire were so often specialists, focusing nearly all of their magical abilities into their Summons. Neith was the first Summoner Caleb had met who broke that mold — she fielded shockingly powerful Enhancement Magic on her own, making her a powerfully swift and strong martial artist alongside her giant spider Summon.
Nyx was clearly doing something similar. Enhancement Magic was involved, but…
What else is she doing? What kind of magic lets her stand against Mister Midnight without the aid of her Summon? How does she — oops!
Caleb barely managed to form a bounce disc and send himself careening in the opposite direction, just in time to avoid a lunging, snapping charge from the Beast.
Focus on your own fight, Caleb. Will’s got Mister Midnight covered.
And it seemed like Mineria did, as well. Caleb couldn’t spare many glances at her, but it was clear that she had some kind of combat magic of her own. He’d never seen Mineria fight, hadn’t even heard of her being able to, but she definitely had the skills when the need arose.
Bouncing and leaping through the air, Caleb considered entering Time-state. Giving himself a moment to slow down, to take things in.
But he didn’t risk it.
It seems like my new Time Magic keeps me on some kind of timer — a timer I can’t predict yet. And last I checked, I still couldn’t enter Time-state. If I have it back, I don’t want to use up all that I have while I’m still trying to figure this fight out. Let’s see what we can do and learn without it first.
Midnight, Will, and Mineria took on Nyx. Caleb, Chelsea, Lorelei, and Gwen took on the Beast. Both groups were sounding their foes out, figuring out who they were, how they worked, and what to expect.
Chelsea and Lorelei shifted their method of attack. Chelsea switched to her explosive darts — small streaks of flame fired with pinpoint accuracy that exploded in a wild conflagration on contact. Lorelei sent spinning, circular blades of ice to try and slice through the Beast, to hack off its transforming limbs and appendages.
Neither change seemed to have much of an impact. Chelsea’s explosive darts had a bit more power to knock the Beast off of its angle, shifting its trajectory by a scant degree or two, but otherwise the Beast seemed to emerge unscathed, just like from any other attack. And while Lorelei was able to slice through extending arms and claws, the parts of the Beast she cut off simply dissolved into black smoke, which rejoined the writhing mass of the Beast’s main body.
Is there a way to do lasting damage to this thing? Or do we need to focus our efforts on Nyx?
But if we all attack her, she’ll probably go back to her usual way of having him shield her from all sides.
Divide and conquer, then?
But is stalling really the best we can do?
No. Think. Observe. Keep testing.
It’s way too early to draw conclusions.
Caleb saw Gwen give the signal, and he hurtled earthward, propelled by a series of bounce discs. Wind tugged at his hair, whipped at his face, and would have torn his glasses free if they weren’t able to magically cling to his face.
The Beast was hot on his tail. Chelsea and Lorelei kept up a constant, vicious assault to slow the monstrous Summon down, but that was all they could do so far — slow him down. Still, even the slightest bit of it helped Caleb get where he was going safely.
Caleb shot through the scant opening in the web of thread that Gwen had left for him, flipping and coming to a skidding stop with the aid of multiple Mobility discs on the flowery floor. He looked up, saw the Beast charging down…
And it was snapped up in Gwen’s trap.
Hundreds of silver threads wrapped around the Beast’s writhing, roiling mass, tightening viciously. They dug into the Beast’s body, cut deeper, deeper, until it looked like it might be cut into a hundred tiny pieces to scatter across the ground.
And then, suddenly, Gwen cried out a warning. She raised her hand, brought it down, and the web moved with it, smashing the Beast against the ground, scattering ancient swords in a cloud of red petals. The Beast writhed, twisted…
And broke free.
Deep gashes healed over in an instant. No signs of injury remained on the wild, animalistic Summon.
“Keep him pinned!” Caleb called out, wrapping the Beast in chains and pulling him tight against the ground. The Beast shattered those chains, but ice suddenly shot up all around, encrusted the Beast’s body, sucked him down to the earth. The ice shattered, but the Beast was met with a flurry of fiery blasts, green flames exploding and flaring all around its writhing bulk. And then Will was there, breaking off from Nyx to join them, manipulating gravity energy to crush the Beast against the ground.
Caleb’s chains wrapped around the writhing, struggling Beast again. Ice came up, enclosed over the Beast’s body, crackling and shifting with the strain of highly increased gravity. Fires rained down, and silver threads cut at the Beast.
Caleb’s entire team was devoted to keeping the monster pinned, to preventing its escape.
We may not be able to defeat it. But we can at least keep it —
An ear-splitting, twisted roar erupted from the pinned Beast. Suddenly, the ground where it was contained by ice and fire and chains and threads and gravity exploded with hundreds of black, spiked tendrils, shooting out, pursuing any targets. Icy shrapnel went flying, severed threads spun off, one whipping past Caleb and slicing a thin line across his cheek.
One of the Beast’s spiked tendrils was following it, striking straight for Caleb’s heart.
He hadn’t seen it. He couldn’t have seen it, it was too fast, he never could have seen it in time…
Time!
Caleb gripped his pocket watch so tight its edges dug into his palm.
He entered Time-state.
And he wasn’t rejected.
The world tinted blue around him, the blue of the River of Time. Sound went muddled, distant, lowering greatly in pitch as it all slowed to a crawl.
Even with the world slowed down so greatly around him, Caleb still barely managed to side-step the oncoming tendril of the Beast. As he did so, turning, he found himself facing the white boulder at the center of the Vale, where Nyx’s fight with Midnight continued.
But he didn’t focus on that fight.
He focused on the sword beside the stone. The sword that he and his team had aided in Nostal Keep, the sword that Caleb had thought had been thanking him when it brought him here.
That sword blazed with bright blue light, now.
Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick—
Caleb could hear the ticking of the watch embedded in the reinforcements at the base of the sword’s blade loud in his ears, fast, too fast, as if it was excited, anxious, full of incredible energy and life, too much to run at time’s normal speed.
The sword suddenly ripped free of the ground, scattering flower petals in a cloud.
And then it flew towards Caleb. Point-first.
Caleb stared, not understanding. He started to step aside, but…
Something was rooting him to the spot. He couldn’t move. All he could do was watch the sword come flying towards him, as if to impale him on its massive, gleaming blade…
And it slammed into him.
He didn’t feel the piercing, cutting sensation of a blade. The sword seemed to vanish, morphed into a bundle of raw energy, and slam right into his chest.
It sent Caleb flying.
The wind was knocked out of him. And he was launched so hard, so fast, that he nearly blacked out from the speed of it, soaring just a foot off the flowered ground.
And then he landed. Skidding, feeling every bone in his body cry out in pain as he hit the ground so hard he carved a trench through the flowers and soil beneath, sending ancient swords flying off, spinning through the air.
When Caleb came to a stop, he couldn’t breathe. He could barely think. His whole body felt broken, shattered, defeated.
He could barely keep his eyes open. Most of him begged for the relief of unconsciousness, but he knew the plight of his friends, knew the danger they faced.
I have to fight — !
He had to, and yet…
That was it. His world went dark, and as he slipped into unconsciousness, he had the distinct sensation of falling down, down, down, slowly, through dark waters.
Drowning.