PSTH: Chapter Fifty-Seven

Just as a reminder, there will be no chapters next week, since I'm not writing this week in order to spend time with family and friends.

-

"And I heard, [audio indecipherable], the noise of thunder. One of the four beasts [audio indecipherable] and I saw, and behold a white horse. There's a man [audio indecipherable] names. And he decides who to free and who to blame. Everybody [audio indecipherable] treated all the same. There'll be a golden ladder reachin' down, when [audio indecipherable] comes around…

-

Possible evidence of a limited number of Pre-Arrival Primals, alongside a prophecy of improved life in the future, Circa 60 Pre-Arrival

-

The instant that the announcement was called, Finley’s Primals both unleashed spells, moving quicker than Kingfisher’s could react. Bagel Thief called up a blistering wind that shook the arena’s protective magic. The winds must have been the byproduct of a truly complicated spell, as they buffeted at the Darkwisp and Starab, resisting any movements that they tried to make, while filling the air underneath Bagel Thief’s wings and helping launch the Litooth forward. I leaned forward as River let out an impressed whistle. The Litooth’s own spell seemed to be an extremely high-level enhancement, conjuring thick plates of quasi-crystalline armor over the rabbit-like fur, while gilding its horn with sharp material that looked like obsidian, almost giving it the appearance of a macuahuitl.

Both threw themselves forward, crossing the distance, but while Kingfisher’s Primals had been slower, it was a matter of fractions of a second, nothing else. The Starab released a spell that seemed to make it split into four copies of itself. For a moment, I thought it was Mirror Self, which was a spell that Zale might pick up once his core was in the mid-twenties, but I should have known to expect more from a Councillor. Each of the copies began to move independent of one another, sometimes intersecting to make it even harder to detect where the real Starab was. Illusionary Selves, not Mirror Self, a far more complex spell. 

The Darkwisp flared, and then cast a spell that I didn’t recognize at all. Dozens of tiny droplets, each one of them looking like beads of darkness that nevertheless glowed and fuzzed with a heat haze began to fall through the arena. Judging by the shadow and flame in the spell, whatever it had originally been had been heavily altered by the Darkwisp’s gift. Some sort of warped Darkwisp variation of Call Rain, maybe? 

The spell interacted strangely with Bagel Thief’s wind, the burning drops smashing hard against Bagel Thief’s wings and the Litooth’s armor, as the winds acted to directly guide the dark fire into the Primals’ vulnerable areas. As the dark fire rain struck, I had to salute Councillor Kingfisher. Either he’d known that he’d not be able to get his spell off fast enough, and had planned for it, or had deliberately lost hold of the initiative in order to set this up. Of course, it was also hitting the Darkwisp and the Starab, but it did nothing to the will of the wisp-esque Primal, and the Starab was incredibly resistant to it. 

I didn’t know exactly how resistant it was. The Darkwisp’s gift made it hard to put exact numbers, as dual-element attacks didn’t normally exist outside of weird gifts like it. But radiance essence was resistant to both fire and shade, while earth essence resisted fire and was neutral to shade, which meant it was at least triply resistant. 

Regent Finley hadn’t just gotten the title of Regent by sitting around doing nothing. The instant the dark fire started to peirce into Bagel Thief’s wings, the spell transformed, shifting from boosting their Primals to blowing the flames away, sending them right at the Starab. The Litooth had crossed the distance, and its rabbit-like fangs flashed in conjunction with its horn, conjuring a razor thin line of gemstones that scored along the Darkwisp. The semi-insubstantial Primal still had a pneuma shell, and even if some of the weight that the strike normally had from raw strength didn’t apply, the anima behind the blow still managed to carve out a big chunk of the battle form. 

In the same instant that the blow landed, however, the Starab and its illusions all began to glow with power, the mandibles lighting up, and blasts of radiant magic erupted from its jaws, all aiming in different directions. As it was, it would be hard to know which of the bolts was the real one, and utterly impossible to dodge all of the potential bolts. One of them slammed into Bagel Thief, only to reveal that it wasn’t there at all, and another skidded across the Litooth, possibly revealing it as a fake. Bagel Thief responded in an instant, claws extending in some sort of concentrated attack.

“Phase Strike,” Gawain said, his eyes narrowing. “That’s not–” 

Before he could even finish his sentence, the Litooth’s horn exploded with power, its teeth glowing white alongside them, while the Phase Strike landed. The Darkwisp must have been doing a sacrificial play, however, as when its pneuma shell shattered, a wave of dark flame surrounded Bagel Thief, seeping into the bird’s pneuma shell, and pumping the battle form full of burning shadows. But the flame didn’t stop there, instead continuing up into the sky, where it fused with the flame rain overhead, and began to splatter down on the Litooth, infecting it, though to a lesser degree. 

Through a stroke of bad luck, the Starab took a heavy ball of rain on its back, and all of the illusions faded. Councillor Kingfisher muttered something under his breath that the winds didn’t pick up, probably a curse. I narrowed my eyes as he sent in his next Primal. Bad luck happened, certainly, but turning this rain into some sort of horrifying infectious burning curse must have been the plan all along. Bagel Thief was already nearly reduced to half his pneuma pool, despite all of the work that had been done, and the Litooth was in a similar situation – less of the shadow flame had infected it, but it was also weaker than Bagel Thief was. 

The next Primal that took the field was an Insubsturgeon, a shade and water element that resembled a sturgeon, with a gift that conferred an innate Shadow Body spell. It was already using the spell, weaving through the toxins to stop it from accumulating any, appearing only long enough to launch a bolt of water from its mouth – Geyser Shot, I thought, but I wasn’t sure. 

Bagel Thief shot into the air as the Litooth traded blows with the Insubsturgeon, preparing another Phase Strike. Even as the Litooth’s shell broke, Bagel Thief shot forward, slamming into nothing. As soon as it made contact with the nothingness, the illusions broke, revealing the Starab flying over the cloud of dark flame, completely unharmed. The damage the illusions had taken had been exactly that – illusionary.  

“Hah! I knew it,” Finley said. “I was going to knock out an illusion, you’d sent in an illusion of your fourth, then I’d waste my anima fighting an illusion, wracking up damage while your Starab floated high in perfect condition.” 

Councillor Kingfisher made a gesture as if he was tipping his had to Finley and nodded. 

“It works more often than you might expect,” he called. “But the thing is… will it be enough? If you were a more traditional Regent, you’d have a team that could cleanse what I affectionately call the Darkfire Toxin infused Rain combo. But I don’t know of any commons that have a healing spell that works on others…” 

Finley grimaced, but didn’t respond, tapping one of their storage gems and sending out another common Primal. This one was an Aquarb, with a large, bulky shell. The water element Primal was reasonably defensive, and resisted enough of the fire rain that I thought it was a good choice. It slammed its claw into the ground, and normal rain began to gather among the fire, spitting sparks as the pair clashed. The Insubsturgeon tried to release some sort of Shadow Claw-esque attack, but the Aquarb’s body glowed and began to heal the damage from both the flame rain and the claw, even as Bagel Thief battled the Starab in the skies above. 

I could immediately see the strategy. Kingfisher was right about not having a way to heal Bagel Thief, but if the Aquarb could maintain its self-heal and neutralize the fire rain, then it could outlast everyone else and win. Of course, that was assuming that the Aquarb could actually maintain it. Much like Scales, the bulk of their power was in physical empowerment via pneuma, rather than anima. Then again, it really might. The Darkwisp had put everything into maintaining the spell, but it was also out of the fight. 

My gaze skipped up to the aerial fight, as Bagel Thief and the Starab clashed one last time. Bagel Thief was consumed by dark fire, as the Starab used a shield of anima to hold off the last Phase Strike… only for it to fail. In the final seconds as the pneuma shell dissolved, the Kirow’s claws rent through the shield and punched a hole in the gemstone shell of the Starab. As it vanished, the dark flaming rain vanished as well. For a moment, I thought it must have been another illusion, but no, it seemed like the spell had been partially maintained by the Starab. I marveled at the immense reserves of the Starab, even as the Aquarb stopped its rain spell and tried to land a Crab Claw on the Insubsturgeon. 

Both Regent and Councillor acted as one then, tapping their final storage gem and releasing their Primals. Finley, as with the rest of their gimmick, sent another common Primal out: a simple Squarrel. The Primal was a combat and null element, and resembled a normal squirrel, but with purple-red fur, two tails, and impressively large muscles. It blazed with a powerful aura the same color of its fur as it dashed in, taking a stance almost like a boxer as it tried to punch the Insubsturgeon. The red aura condensed around its hand, and it must have been some sort of spell beyond ordinary strikes, as the punch actually connected, and the fish was sent flying. Even as that was happening, though, a Taurualist charged out from Councillor Kingfisher. 

My eyes widened at the sight of a second epic from the Councillor. The dual earth and radiant Primal was one of the more common epics, insofar as any epic rarity could be called anything other than incredibly unusual. Its gift was yet another weird one – instead of an anima and a pneuma pool, the Primal had a single unified pool of both that was half again the size that both put together should be. That meant that at the start of a fight, it had immense physical and magical might, but with each spell cast, its body also grew weaker. With each blow taken, there was less magic to pull from. The instant it appeared on the field, it used Bull Rush and slammed its horns into the Aquarb. In line with what I’d expect from a fresh Taurualist, the blow caused massive glowing cracks to form on the Aquarb. 

Against most other common Primals so many levels below it, it would have been a one hit knockout, but Finley had done a lot of work on his Primals’ ousia weaves. For all the crab-like Primal looked common, its weave had been refined over and over again, until it possessed as much strength as an epic. The Aquarb’s shell began healing as it slammed its Crab Claw spell down on the Taurualist’s head, only for the Taurualist to strike with Furious Horns. As they exchanged strikes, the Insubturgeon and Squarrel flashed around, combat magic aura meeting shadow as the pair moved with languid alacrity around the ring. Then the Squarrel’s muscular little tails slammed into the mouth of the Insubturgeon, and the Insubturgeon vanished. The Squarrel rushed the Taurualist, even as the Aquarb’s pneuma shell dissolved, removing it from the fight. 

In their first blow, the common Squarrel and the Taurualist seemed to be evenly matched, both taking the same damage as the other. But the Taurualist had to expend its pneuma-anima mix to both strike and defend, and with each exchange, the Taurualist came off just a little bit worse, until– 

An ear-shattering crack resounded through the ring as the Taurualist was suplexed and slammed down into the floor, and its defensive shell broke, leaving Riley grinning next to a common Squarrel.