"What is this? Some plan to trap me?" Merrin winced, edging backwards. This cannot be happening. How do I keep getting myself into such troubles? A hand tapped on his shoulder: Shae.
"Lighten up," she said. "You were looking for the same thing as us... It's only fate that we end up together."
He hated that word: Fate. "You did this!" Merrin frowned, watching as the beast floundered in a drunken daze. What was she doing to him? Or rather, what was she making it see?
"You can blame me if that's your wish, although I doubt it would help you in this situation."
"Situation?" Merrin looked at her. "What situation? I'm not here, this is your problem!"
Sibel grunted.
Shae beamed. "Won't you be collecting the bounty on its head?"
"I DON'T CARE!" Merrin snapped. "You might as well give it to that man who killed your Chula!" Oh, that was a bad idea... He knew that now, saw it in the slow fading of expressions. That and the sudden chill within the air. What was happening?
Shae?
What came next was a smile. A sudden brightening of features. She was chuckling. Chuckling? "You know, for a nightsailer barely past his single day, you have quite a number of lords asking of you."
A threat.
Merrin stepped back.
"Don't," she said. "Don't you ever use Chula like that?"
Why did I even do it in the first place?
"You two..." Sibel called out. "That thing is learning."
Learning?
Next...
Something pierced through the air, loud. A black mass... A tendril. What was—? Too late, as instincts surged through. In a moment, he was rolling over the steamy grounds, backing with a thud against a building.
Gasping fast, Merrin noted the black wire wriggling, hard-pierced into shattered rock. Shae was a meter beside it... Somehow, she had evaded too. Too fast... Too instinctual.
Like an Ashman!
Now they both stood opposite the black strand, its end stretching towards the shadowy figure. Poised it was, ready. Somehow, whatever Sibel had done had failed now.
Mist!
It attacked! A flash of blackness as the shadows stirred once again. It was before him now. A man of darkness—no light, no features, just nothing. It was swinging down, hurling fast that tendril of an arm. By the lords, was that thing even human? How did such a thing exist in a Great Clan's Territory?
So many questions, so little time.
The arm slapped down, closing in above his face. He blinked, and he was standing a meter away from the creature, watching as the attack meant for him ended in a futile clash with the earth. What just happened?
Mentation spun.
It was as though he had moved. But he didn't... Something had moved him.
Shae bounced a knife between her hands some meters away, grinning. She had done it? The movement... That was her? How did she do it? Merrin watched, dumbfounded. She was faster than him... In the cast. How was that even possible?
Undoubtedly, such a symbol required tremendous force and time... And yet... in just a moment, she had done so.
What in damnation is happening in Nightfell?
In that moment, Merrin wondered whether the might of the El'shadie was truly that.
"I think you should be paying more attention." Shae.
What?
A tendril swung forward, and Merrin drowned all thoughts within. There was no time for it now. No time to escape. No time to ponder on the might of these strange women. There was only the moment—the enemy.
And that was enough... That was... oddly liberating.
The dance had begun!
He dashed forward, twirling the blade through his fingers, allowing just for this moment the acceptance of the instance. He loved it. It calmed the fear, and the lords above knew how much he needed it. Perhaps that was the point of this situation.
Was it?
Ahead, the creature stood, arm swaying about its person. It thinks itself the strongest. The predator... How little it knows. Merrin is before it, piercing forward with that blade of his. The creature evades little, and the knife sinks into flesh...
Flesh?
Wait?
Merrin stared down at the injury; there was none, just his weapon sunken three inches into the monster. There was no blood, no scream, no reaction to a weapon within flesh... Just passivity. And he looked up into the eyes of his enemy; except, there were no eyes, just a sleek smoothness of flowing shadows.
What is this?
The creature swung at him, a tendril closing onto his face. Yet in that moment, the world twisted, and he stood... again... some meters away from the creature. In that, Merrin sensed, contained some knowledge.
After all, casting was never about pushing one symbol. No. It was a collective, countless symbols in an attempt to achieve one effect. Was she doing something similar?
Ahh, what does that matter? He moved again, closing in as the creature twisted its form, tendrils smashing through the air, turbulent. Sibel was gone, perhaps shifted again by Shae. However, she, on the other hand, stood strong, dancing through the thrashing, flowing past each onslaught.
Almost like a dance. Could she be—
A shot interrupted that train of thought. And he was gone again, shifted like before. Rather invasive, that casting of hers. But it was good, allowing for the settling of the mind. His mind. And she knew it too; Shae, with her knife, swung away a cloud of rising steam and glanced at him with a wink. "Let's see how the Ashman moves."
Was that a challenge?
She leaped into the air, arching, with a smile ever-present on her face, and then the knife was let loose, sniping towards the creature. It missed it, sticking instead into the earth beside it. Was that it?
It was not. Because next, before his eyes, the girl blinked away from the air, fading just then behind the creature, her hand resting on the hilt of the knife. She gripped it, a cold gaze in her eyes, and she pierced in.
She should know that would do nothing. Or so he thought. The creature, on the other hand, quivered to the strike, its tendrils swirling violently at the attack. Almost as though it was a response to pain. Pain? She made it feel pain?
How?
The creature surged in motion, hammering its arm into her. Except that it had little of the desired outcome, just dust. Why? Because she was gone, above it now, beating her knife into its head. Just for a moment, as she blinked away again. Standing now next to him, sighing.
"That won't stop it."
Merrin glanced at her, beside him, stunned. "How did you even harm it?"
A raised brow was the response. "What?" she asked.
Merrin frowned, pointing. "How did you make it feel that?" he said. "Was it some symbol?"
Now she cocked her head. "Now that's interesting," she said. "You can fly, and have perhaps the largest amount of soulForce I have ever seen... Mind too, and you don't know how to coat yourself with it? Or at least, a weapon of choice."
Coat yourself? "How does someone coat themselves with their mind?" In the end, that was what force was... the mindForce, at least. Often one can misinterpret the mindForce as some energy, but it was not... What it was, was the power of the mind.
She chuckled. "You're an odd one. I wonder truly how someone like you ever managed to save a raven."
From a pit of statues and Bastards!
"In any case, you do coat yourself in the soulForce," she said. "Perhaps unknowingly, but you do... You know, with that whole fancy light thing..."
"Mmmm."
"Don't grunt." She smiled. "That thing isn't human; it's a symbol, I think..."
"All things are symbols."
"Yes, yes." She laughed. "But that one is an actual one... A little mad with discord, but a symbol powered by the mindForce... You see, the mind subdues symbols for one simple reason: it too can harm them... If you can focus it, that is." What followed next was a silence by his side.
She was gone, attacking instead at the creature there. But she had left something, though... a thought. Merrin watched, standing in the road, the steam flowing past him in whiffs of warmed white.
The mind harms itself... The mind harms the mind. That was the logic in her words. And there was some trueness in it, he was sure. After all, within the grayness, the mindForce existed like a tide of clear water... And he, for one, knew how sharp water could be.
He knew that indeed... He could remember the past when a man with a bluish sword, Sea Call, had saved him from the fallen that ended Leim. So without doubt... the sea could cut.
What then stopped the waters of the mind?
Merrin stared at her... at the grace with which she danced and blinked past the creature...
The mind was the ultimate dominator.
The force that drowns all.
But not for today... For today... It should cut.
And suddenly, in that moment, everything faded into a pulsing greyness.