Bash moved first.
He did not rush her.
Instead, he reached into the lattice of charms hanging from his armor and twisted two free with practiced ease. Bone and wood clicked softly as he flicked them outward, letting them spin once in the air before striking the ground at his feet.
They sank into the soil without resistance.
Green light bled outward in a slow pulse, crawling along the damp earth like veins surfacing beneath skin. The fog reacted immediately. Its density wavered, thinning in irregular bands as the charms asserted influence—forcing the mist into structured layers, binding it into a corridor wider and longer than before.
Bash exhaled through his nose, satisfied.
"See?" he called. "It listens."
The skull atop his staff glimmered faintly, its hollow eyes drawing in ambient mana as the fog strained against the imposed order. The corridor held, trembling but intact.
Agatha did not move.
The mist around her did not recoil. It did not thin. It did not obey.
Instead, it shifted.
What Bash had forced into alignment simply… slid.
The fog around Agatha thickened by degrees too subtle to notice at first. Not by mass, but by behavior. Its motion slowed, viscosity increasing as if the air itself had gained resistance. Light bent differently there, refracting in shallow distortions that made distance unreliable.
Bash frowned.
He flicked another charm down.
This one shattered on impact, releasing a ripple of corrective force—an old technique, designed to overwrite interference by brute repetition. The pulse surged forward, reinforcing the corridor, tightening its edges, pressing outward toward her position.
The mist met it.
And parted.
Not violently. Not in resistance.
It separated along planes Bash had not defined, folding away from the pulse as though acknowledging its presence and choosing irrelevance. The green-lit corridor extended another few meters—then lost cohesion, its far edge fraying into nothing as the fog reclaimed it without effort.
Bash's smile thinned.
"That's new," he muttered.
Behind him, unseen, Fur felt the hairs along his arms lift.
The fog was no longer reacting to Bash's magic.
It was responding to context.
Agatha raised her staff—not as a threat, not in preparation, but as one might adjust balance while standing still. The runes along its length pulsed once, violet light dimmed beneath restraint.
The mist answered.
It did not surge forward. It did not close in.
Instead, the space between them subtly redefined itself.
Distance compressed—not physically, but perceptually. Bash took an unconscious half-step forward and felt no change in ground beneath his feet, yet Agatha appeared closer than before. Not larger. Not clearer. Just… nearer.
Bash's charms rattled.
Several dimmed at once.
He looked down sharply, fingers tightening around his staff. "You're interfering."
Agatha's voice carried without effort. "You are imposing."
She tilted her head slightly, studying the way his corridor fought to remain coherent. "Your magic is loud. It announces itself. That works on unsettled terrain."
The fog stirred at her words, thickening at the edges of Bash's influence.
"This place is neither," she continued.
Bash snorted, planting his staff harder. "Everything settles eventually."
He drove the skull staff into the ground.
This time, the response was immediate.
The skull's eye sockets flared bright green as accumulated power discharged in a focused wave. The fog ahead convulsed, dragged into rigid alignment as the charm network synchronized—corridor walls snapping into sharper definition, edges locking into place with audible cracks of displaced mana.
The structure held.
For a breath.
Agatha exhaled.
The sound was quiet. Barely audible.
The fog breathed with her.
Not outward.
Downward.
The mist sank, pressure redistributing through layers Bash's charms had never accounted for. The corridor's walls did not collapse—they simply lost relevance, their boundaries dissolving as the fog's density shifted below the threshold his magic governed.
The green light faltered.
One charm blackened, then fell silent.
Bash felt it go.
His eyes widened a fraction.
Fur's grip tightened around the green metal box. It pulsed once—harder than before—then went still, as if bracing.
Agatha lowered her staff again.
"I will repeat myself once," she said, calmly. "Turn back."
The fog pressed closer, not hostile, not aggressive—selective. Bash felt it brushing against his boots, his knees, testing the contours of his presence the way a tide tests stone.
He bared his teeth behind the mask.
"Arrogant witch," he said, though the words came slower now. "You think tricks like this—"
Another charm flickered.
Not shattered.
Not drained.
Simply… disconnected.
The skull staff's glow dimmed, its hungry pull stuttering as if something upstream had closed a valve.
For the first time, Bash felt uncertainty cut through his confidence.
And somewhere in the fog, Fur shifted position, already recalculating.
The boundary had been touched.
And it was answering.
The moment the charm went dead, Bash stopped smiling.
He did not retreat. He did not hesitate. He simply shifted posture—feet spreading, staff angling forward, shoulders squaring as the last traces of levity drained from his bearing.
"Fine," he said quietly. "We do it properly."
He reached back with his free hand and tore three charms loose at once.
They were heavier than the others. Bone cores wrapped in layered bindings, each etched with compression glyphs so dense they hummed even before activation. Bash flung them forward in a wide arc, not toward Agatha directly, but into the fog between them.
They detonated midair.
Green-white light erupted outward in concussive spheres, the explosions muffled but violent, displacing fog in rolling shockwaves that flattened the mist into churning voids. The blasts were not fire—they were force, raw mana pressure collapsing outward in expanding shells.
The ground buckled.
Soil cratered, wet earth blasting upward in thick sprays as the shockwaves tore through the saturated plateau. Trees shuddered violently at the perimeter, bark splitting as branches snapped under sudden stress.
Agatha moved.
Not quickly. Precisely.
She stepped sideways as the first blast passed through where she had been, her robes fluttering as displaced air screamed past. Her staff rose in a smooth arc, violet runes igniting as she traced a short, sharp sigil in the air.
Darkness condensed.
A lance of compressed shadow tore forward, not wide, not explosive, but impossibly dense—matter and mana crushed into a single vector. It punched cleanly through the rolling shockwave, splitting it like fabric as it continued onward.
Bash twisted aside.
The Dark Lance sheared past his shoulder, close enough that the residual pressure ripped charms from his armor and sent them skittering across the ground. The fog behind him parted violently as the lance buried itself into the earth, leaving behind a perfectly circular borehole that sank deep and drank light.
Bash laughed once—short, sharp.
"Oh, that's more like it!"
He slammed his staff down again.
This time, the skull screamed.
Green energy flooded outward, not as a wave, but as a command. The fog convulsed as something beneath it responded—sigils flaring beneath the soil, old summoning circles snapping awake one after another.
The ground split.
Grey shapes burst forth from the ruptured earth—sleek, skeletal forms with elongated limbs and too many joints, their hides stretched tight over rune-etched bone. Their eyes burned with sickly green fire as they hauled themselves free, four… six… ten of them, forming a loose crescent between Bash and Agatha.
Greyhounds.
They did not bark.
They shrieked—a piercing, layered sound that scraped across the mind more than the ears. The fog recoiled around them, pushed aside by the corrupt vitality that radiated from their bodies.
"Run her down," Bash ordered.
They surged forward.
Fast.
Their movement was wrong—not muscle and momentum, but sudden displacement, bodies blurring as they leapt across impossible distances, claws tearing into soil that barely registered their weight.
Agatha did not retreat.
She planted her staff and let her free hand drop, fingers splaying against the damp air. Mana bled outward—not dark, not light, but neutral, cold, directive.
Elemental inducement.
The moisture in the fog responded instantly.
Water thickened.
Not into ice—into weight.
The air before her gained mass as suspended moisture condensed into microfilms, each layer increasing drag exponentially. The leading greyhound hit the induced field at full speed and slammed to an abrupt halt, its body folding unnaturally as momentum crushed it inward.
It did not die.
It screamed.
The others barreled into the zone moments later, colliding with the trapped creature and each other as the suddenly viscous air robbed them of acceleration. Limbs tangled. Claws scraped uselessly at nothing.
Agatha advanced one step.
Her staff flared.
Another Dark Lance erupted, shorter this time, angled downward. It speared through the writhing mass, pinning three greyhounds to the ground at once. Shadow spread along the lance's length, eating through summoned flesh as the creatures convulsed and then went still.
Bash clicked his tongue.
"Wasteful," he muttered.
He raised his staff and twisted it sharply.
The earth behind Agatha ruptured again.
Hands burst from the soil—rotted, swollen, wrapped in funerary bindings soaked through with old reagents. Corpses dragged themselves free in jerking motions, jaws hanging loose as necromantic anchors snapped into place.
Ghouls.
They rose in uneven numbers, dozens of them, forming a loose ring that pressed inward from all sides. Their movements were slower than the hounds, but relentless—each step dragging corruption into the ground beneath them, fouling mana pathways as they advanced.
Fur's breath hitched.
This was no longer a test.
Agatha felt the shift immediately.
The plateau's mana balance sagged as the ghouls spread, their presence poisoning the ambient field. Elemental inducement grew more difficult—corrupted vectors resisting clean manipulation.
"Clever," she said quietly.
She swept her staff outward.
Fire answered—not summoned, but freed.
Residual heat trapped in stone and soil surged upward as thermal gradients inverted. The ground around her ignited in controlled arcs, flames racing outward in branching patterns that incinerated the nearest ghouls before they could close.
The fire did not spread.
It curved.
Bash's eyes widened slightly as the flames bent away from Agatha's position, forming a rotating barrier that advanced outward with her, consuming the dead while leaving the fog intact.
He responded instantly.
Explosive sigils ignited along his staff, and he hurled a compressed energy projectile directly into the fireline.
It detonated on contact.
The explosion tore a hole through the advancing flames, shockwaves scattering burning fragments outward and sending ghouls flying in pieces. Smoke and ash billowed, choking the air as the fog struggled to reassert itself.
Agatha felt the impact ripple through the induced field.
She adjusted.
Wind joined the rotation.
The smoke was torn apart, flung upward in spiraling columns as pressure differentials snapped into place. The fog returned beneath it, denser than before, swallowing the battlefield in layered concealment.
Visibility vanished.
Bash swore.
He unleashed another volley blindly—three projectiles in rapid succession, detonations hammering the ground and sending tremors through the plateau.
One shockwave clipped Agatha.
Her wards flared, absorbing most of it, but the force still drove her back half a step, boots cutting shallow furrows through the wet soil.
Fur moved.
From his vantage point, he saw the momentary imbalance—the fractional delay in her recovery, the way the fog lagged a breath behind her repositioning.
That was the opening.
The green metal box in his hand vibrated violently now, surface glyphs flaring as if reacting to a frequency only it could hear.
Agatha felt it.
Something else entered the field.
Her gaze snapped toward the tree line—but she did not turn fully. Not yet.
Instead, she raised her staff and drove it into the ground.
Darkness surged.
Not outward—downward.
A network of shadowed lines raced through the soil, severing necromantic anchors with surgical precision. Ghouls collapsed en masse as their bindings failed, bodies slumping back into the earth as if gravity had suddenly remembered them.
Bash snarled.
"You're not walking out of this!"
He overcharged his staff.
Green energy roared, charms disintegrating as power surged beyond their tolerances. The skull cracked, screaming as it poured everything it had into one final, overwhelming projection.
Agatha lifted her staff.
Violet runes blazed white-hot.
The fog froze.
For a heartbeat, everything held still—
—and then the collision came.
Force met shadow. Explosion met compression. Fire, wind, water, and dark mana twisted together in a violent nexus that ripped the ground apart and sent a column of distorted air screaming skyward.
Trees toppled.
Stone shattered.
The plateau groaned under the strain.
And through it all, Agatha stood—robes torn, wards flaring, eyes locked forward.
Bash staggered, blood seeping through cracks in his bone armor, breath ragged but laughter still clawing its way out.
The laughter finally left Bash's throat.
It did not fade.
It stopped—cut clean, as if severed by a blade.
He stood hunched now, one knee half-bent, staff braced against shattered ground. Cracks webbed through his bone armor, green light bleeding through the fractures in erratic pulses. Blood ran dark along his side, soaking into the wrappings beneath, hissing faintly where it touched corrupted mana residue.
His breathing was loud.
Ugly.
But his eyes still burned.
"You…" he rasped, voice stripped of mockery. "You're costing me."
Agatha said nothing.
She remained where she was, hovering just above the ground now, boots no longer touching soil that had been pulverized into slurry and glassed stone. Torn robes fluttered around her, edges scorched, sleeves ripped, but her posture was unchanged—spine straight, staff steady, gaze level.
The fog had pulled back again.
Not gone.
Watching.
Bash straightened slowly, vertebrae popping beneath armor plates as he rolled his shoulders back into alignment. He reached to his belt—not for a charm this time.
For himself.
Green light crawled up his arm as he bit down on a sigil carved directly into his flesh. The rune flared once, then sank inward, dissolving into veins that blackened as power flooded his system.
"Toxic storm," he said.
The words were not a spell.
They were a designation.
The air screamed.
Not with sound—with reaction.
Mana in the surrounding atmosphere destabilized instantly, saturation spiking as corrupted vectors bled outward from Bash's position. The fog recoiled violently as emerald vapor erupted skyward, coiling into a churning mass of poisonous cloud shot through with jagged lightning.
Rain fell.
Not water.
Acidic droplets hammered into the ground, eating into stone, dissolving vegetation into hissing sludge. The plateau blackened as the storm spread outward in a widening radius, wind howling as pressure collapsed inward toward Bash like a lung drawing breath.
Agatha moved.
She shot upward, cloak snapping behind her as she climbed above the first surge of corrosive wind. Wards flared along her limbs as toxic mist licked at her heels, sizzling where it touched her defenses.
Below, Bash raised his staff again.
Ash manifested.
The storm thickened, green clouds darkening as particulate matter condensed into physical form. Black ash rained upward, defying gravity as it spiraled around Bash, coalescing into drifting shapes—half-formed limbs, fractured torsos, screaming faces locked forever in combustion.
Burned dead.
Ash-wraiths tore free from the storm and hurled themselves skyward, shrieking as they clawed through the air toward Agatha, their touch corroding mana itself.
She twisted midair, staff sweeping wide.
Chains erupted from nothingness.
Not summoned—declared.
Violet constructs snapped into existence around her, rune-etched links forming faster than sight could track. The chains lashed outward, snapping ash-wraiths apart on contact, binding others mid-lunge before detonating in bursts of compressed force.
Agatha did not stop moving.
She flew.
Not like a spellcaster buoyed by levitation, but like something that understood air as territory. Wind folded around her as she dove and climbed, changing vectors with surgical precision, chains snapping and recoiling at her command.
Below, Bash snarled and slammed his staff into the ground.
Bone mystic arts answered.
The earth ruptured violently as skeletal structures tore free—ribcages larger than wagons, vertebral spines coiling upward like towers. They assembled themselves mid-rise, bone grinding against bone as necromantic geometry locked into place.
Bone colossi.
Hollow giants clawed their way upright, skulls split open to reveal blazing green cores. They raised massive arms and hurled spears of fused bone upward, each projectile screaming with compressed death-aspected mana.
Agatha spun.
Chains wrapped around incoming spears, yanking them off course or shattering them outright. One slipped through—she snapped her wrist, redirecting the chain mid-flight, barely deflecting the strike as it grazed her ward and detonated behind her in a burst of splintered bone.
She hissed softly, pain flaring across her side.
Imps answered.
Circles snapped open in the air around her—small, tight summoning glyphs rotating at oblique angles. From them poured black-skinned figures with ember eyes and hooked claws, shrieking with manic glee as they spilled into the sky.
They did not charge blindly.
They coordinated.
Imps swarmed the ash-wraiths, clawing into unstable forms, detonating themselves to destabilize corrupted mana clusters. Others dove toward the bone colossi, crawling over massive frames to gnaw at joints and cores, shrieking curses as they died by the dozens.
Bash roared.
The storm intensified.
Toxic lightning lashed upward, green arcs tearing through the sky, vaporizing imps mid-flight and forcing Agatha higher. Wind howled so violently it tore chains apart if she wasn't careful, forcing constant recalculation.
She raised her staff again.
Chains multiplied.
They snapped outward in complex geometries, not striking Bash directly but latching—onto bone constructs, into storm currents, around lightning arcs. Mana flowed through them, redirecting force, stealing momentum, turning the battlefield into a suspended web of violence.
One chain wrapped around a colossus' core.
Agatha pulled.
The giant screamed as its internal structure collapsed, bone imploding inward as necromantic anchors snapped. It toppled sideways, crashing into another construct and taking it down in a cascade of shattered remains.
Bash staggered.
The storm faltered for half a heartbeat.
Blood poured freely now, armor barely holding together as feedback tore through his systems. His staff shook violently in his grip, skull screaming as fractures spread across its surface.
Still, he did not fall.
"You think—" he coughed, spitting blood, "—this is enough?"
He tore something free from his chest.
A shard of bone, etched end to end in spiraling glyphs, still wet with blood.
He crushed it.
The ash storm screamed.
Every remaining ash-wraith detonated at once, collapsing inward as their particulate matter fused into a single descending mass—a spiraling spear of compressed ash and toxin, rotating faster and faster as it plunged toward Agatha like a falling star.
Agatha's eyes narrowed.
Chains snapped inward, forming a rotating lattice around her as she braced, imps swarming to reinforce the structure with bodies and detonations.
The impact was catastrophic.
The ash spear slammed into the lattice, pressure exploding outward in all directions. Chains shattered. Imps vanished in fire. Agatha was driven backward through the air, wards flaring violently as she fought to maintain altitude.
She did not fall.
She adapted.
Wind snapped hard, reversing direction as she twisted, bleeding momentum into controlled descent. Chains lashed outward again—fewer now, thinner—but precise.
They struck Bash.
Not his body.
His staff.
The skull cracked.
Green light flared wildly, then sputtered as chains wrapped around the staff's shaft and yanked sideways. Bash howled as the weapon was torn from his grip, spinning end over end before embedding itself deep into the shattered ground.
The storm began to collapse.
Toxic clouds thinned, lightning fading into sporadic flickers as the system lost coherence.
Bash dropped to one knee.
Then the other.
He panted, hands pressed into ruined soil, blood dripping freely now as his armor sloughed off in fragments. The bone colossi crumbled without command, collapsing into lifeless heaps.
Agatha hovered above him.
Breathing hard now, chest rising and falling as she steadied herself midair. Her wards flickered, some shattered entirely, others barely holding. Chains hung slack around her, dissolving one by one as mana reserves dipped into caution.
She leveled her staff.
"This ends," she said.
Behind the battlefield, unseen by her—
Fur moved.
He had watched the storm rise.
Watched the bone giants fall.
Watched Bash be reduced from dominance to desperation.
His jaw tightened.
This was not the man he followed.
This was not worth dying for.
The green metal box remained sealed at his side.
He let it be.
Instead, he reached back and drew his axe.
The blade drank light, edges blurred by enchantment as camouflage fields rippled outward, bending perception, swallowing sound. Fur vanished into the chaos, using collapsing fog, drifting ash, and mana distortion as cover.
Agatha began her descent.
And Fur adjusted his path, angling upward through the fog.
Her wards were forward-weighted, attention locked on Bash.
Fur leapt.
The axe rose.
The fog swallowed the space behind her.