mindBlast(Talisa); mindBlast(Talisa);
Talisa screamed, closed her eyes, and repulsed the mind blasts away. Still, it took away some of her strength. But who?!
Serun, Juulyn, Jhynie, Atell, Second, and Third burst in, no longer trapped in the staircase hallucination, for the Archon had left and could no longer keep weaving the illusion.
“We got you covered, Kay!”, Second yelled, and strafed the Queen with suppressing fire. But his name was not Second. Eidren now knew that Second’s name was Ezreal Talauth.
“Let’s finish this and get the fuck back home!”, Third shouted, as he unloaded too. But his name was not Third. Eidren now knew that Third’s name was Enon Talauth.
“For the Goddess!”, Serun bellowed, and he too let loose burst after burst of rounds.
What he said! Jhynie telepathed, as she aimed her railgun. The spirit-suit couldn’t catch that one.
Ditto. Juulyn telepathed, as she sent mind blast after mind blast at the Queen. The liquid carapace couldn’t catch anything incorporeal.
“Die, Talisa!”, Atell screamed, and he rushed the Queen with a spear he had found from one of the unconscious knights strewn all up and down the staircase. For Atell had remembered just how awful Clan Talauth had been to Clan Boucher.
More of these fools?! Enough!
massTotalDomination.massPowerWordKill( [Ezrael Talauth, Enon Talauth, Serun Amallark, Juulyn Amallark, Jhynie Amallark, Atell Boucher]);
redirectToOther(massPowerWordKill, lastName == Amallark).hallucinate(param: that it worked)
Kill.
Kill. Kill.
Kill. Kill. Kill.
Talisa cackled, brushed her hands as if satisfied with her work, stepped over to Eidren, still kneeling, spirit-blood pouring profusely out of his chest and arms and-
“YA-AH!” Atell shoved his spear right into Talisa’s stomach, finding a gap where a spirit-suit tendril had caught a bullet.
POP! Jhynie blew off her hand with a railgun shot.
With the spirit-suit shrieking in pain now, never having taken so much damage before, Ezrael, Enon, and Serun could score hits on her legs and left flank, though the spirit-suit could still absorb most of the impact.
And Juulyn’s mind blasts sent the Queen’s mind scrambling.
“AA-Aargh!”, Talisa too had never been in so much physical pain before in her life. Who?! She had killed these morons! She had Mass Power Word: Killed them! How could this be?
“I’ve learned a few tricks too.”
It was Vilithe.
Eidren looked up- how? Was she here? No, it’s just a psionic projection, Malevolent informed him. He had now joined the fight too, unbound from the Archon, who had used him as a first foothold for basic psionic foundation.
The psionic projection of Vilithe strode up to Talisa. Talisa bore eyes of hate, but her body was falling apart. She was nursing her blown up hand, a spear was sticking out of her stomach, and her legs were a bloody mess, riddled with deflected bullet grazes. She fell to the ground, slumped over her finished, folded legs.
“It’s over Talisa.”
Talisa just started laughing. And golf clapping. Or, attempting to. She was missing a hand.
Oh good job, Callethean.
Then Talisa’s dying body said out loud, “But I have a few-” before slumping forward and passing on. There actually was a sound of golf clapping though…
“-tricks of my own, as well.” What?!
Out of nowhere another Talisa had just appeared, completely unscathed. Golf clapping, of course.
“By the way, thank you for bringing more of my bois back. Don’t think you found gurlfriends for them too, hmm?” She reached out a hand, middle finger slightly extended.
totalDomination([Ezreal Talauth, Enon Talauth]);
Ezreal pointed his gun at Juulyn.
Enon pointed his gun at Jhynie. Jhynie pointed her gun back.
Serun pointed his gun at Ezreal and Enon.
Atell had some trouble getting his spear out of the first Talisa’s corpse, especially with the spirit-suit wrapping around it tightly, so the second Talisa strode right up- the spirit katana jumped out of the corpse’s hand and into the hands of its next wielder, and casually slashed his throat open, not even bothering to try for why should she need to aim her swing? The spirit-katana did the work for her, and whipped out and sought the jugular, which slashed apart with a snicker-snack. The tear was so great to such a hard pumping vessel that black blood fulminated like a popped balloon, it covered the new Talisa and made her even scarier than she already was.
Oh, for fuck’s sake! Malevolent made a jump through Eidren’s body into the psionic nodes of the Inner Sanctum- he couldn’t be limited by the bounds of Vilithe’s body at this point if they were going to survive this. He needed to find out how Talisa had cheated death, it was impossible!
Jhynie shot Enon with her railgun first, the round blew through his chest, and he collapsed, but not before he could hold the trigger and let loose a wild spray of bullets that went in every direction.
Juulyn turned her psionics to Ezreal and caught him in a Hold Person before he could kill her, but one of Enon’s stray shots grazed her shoulder and cried out, “Agh!” But she did not let the pain falter her psionic hold on Ezreal.
Then Serun headshot Ezreal- perfectly still he was an easy target. An elvan classic- the crowd control gank.
Thank you for the assist, Juulyn, thought Serun.
No problem, you kind of saved my life! Juulyn thought back.
New Talisa walked to Eidren with flickering bloody spirit-katana in hand.
The fae Vilithe appeared to punch her, but the blow just phased right through New Talisa, leaving no harm. Talisa thought- what did this foolish vassal expect?
dominate.puppeteer(Talisa Talauth);
But it was no use, error, access denied, Vilithe was just too far away, the psionic projection just for show, bravado, to inspire morale, especially for Eidren – she knew his name now, she knew his name, omg – but what’s worse was that now that the Gestalt had ended, her power- she just wasn’t sure, she didn’t think that her psionic power rivaled the Queen’s, she certainly didn’t think so before all this happened, she didn’t think so now. She was not the Archon. And even they had met their match against the Queen, and far more.
Oh, try and get into my mind, hm, Vilithe? Not so strong now without that Gestalt to help you?
mindBlast().puppeteer(Vilithe Callethe)
Even though Vilithe was very far away, it was like Talisa had stepped into the reaver with her, put her head next to Vilithe’s ear and whispered ‘boo’.
Vilithe was now hit with a hideous nightmare, a truly finely tuned mind blast, where the reaver’s belly began to shrink and shrink and shrink, for Talisa had found Vilithe’s greatest fear- in extreme cases she could be a bit claustrophobic. It was why having to sleep in the hexcomb tubes was especially awful for her, at least for the first few revolutions before she forced herself to get used to it. A recurring nightmare she had during those awful first few revs was that Clan Amallark would just simply never slide her out of the tube, that the spirits would just somehow disobey her when she gave the thought that she wanted out, forever, and that she would just starve or dehydrate to death in there.
Now Vilithe felt she was wrapped in a cocoon that blocked all light from entering, binding her into a mummified position, unable to move. The projection followed suit, freezing to a frozen stick pose, and although normally Vilithe would have made sure her projection stayed stoic, Talisa hacked it so that Eidren could see his lover’s face screaming with terror at her predicament. But she could not see him. She could not see anything.
Juulyn threw a mindBlast(Talisa Talauth);
With a snap of her finger, Talisa reflected it with a repulse.reflectBackToSender();
Juulyn fell back clutching her head, groaning and crying, experiencing her own mind blast.
A bullet whizzed by Talisa’s head.
mislead();
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Serun shot at a mirror image of Talisa that just didn’t seem to go down, all his shots passed through, and he just got angrier and angrier shouting, “Die! Die! Die!”, and he was just too dumb to think that maybe her real self, invisible to him, was just ten meters away.
Jhynie was still reloading. It was bullpup too, oh no, Eidren had even thought it when he first saw it- why did you pick that thing up this rotation? Why even touch that garbage at all?
Talisa walked up to Eidren. The Knight Leader. Kay-El.
Her son. Well, perhaps more like her experiment, wasn’t he? Grown in a tank, not raised by a brood mother, with no worker mother. Her creation. Parts of her, parts of… something else.
He looked defeated. He was on his knees. The slashes had hurt him profoundly. He was bleeding profusely, streaking into a few pools of black blood gathered around his shins pressed to the floor.
She raised her spirit-katana, Muramasa, the Carnage Spirit-Saw, Entropic Blade, Streaming Blade, Vorpal Blade, Chaos Blade, Sentient Blade. Her hand-crafted psionic melee spirit-weapon.
The tanks! They’re in the tanks! She has spirits implementing a continuous psionic invisibility over her SIMULACRA! Mal? Malevolent was thought-screaming right into Vilithe’s auditory cortexes, hoping it would be psi-loud enough to break through her own screams.
Simulacra.
Simulacra!
Simulacra – the Simulacrum Technique – this was theoretical psionics. This was the thing that the God Empress herself sought, that every Queen had sought at one point. True immortality.
Phylacteries. Horcruxes. Talisa was a Lich.
She had cultivated a spirit, made it so elvan-like that it was almost like an elvan itself – it was a very sporadic occurrence that required great emotional intensity from the host and was something which had been slowly ironed out of the Queens in the centuries – and then copied her own mind into it, every memory, every experience, every thought, until the spirit itself was no longer distinguishable from her. It amplified psionic power by two-fold. If you only made one.
The Simulacrum would always serve the Prime. Being in two places at the same time, accomplishing two completely different goals in spacetime, always being in sync, but more than that. A decoy, a patsy, a shield. Or a second body, a second chance at life, a psionic resurrection, if the Prime was killed. You cannot kill something as long as there’s a backup. Like a block in the ethereal chains, it was permanent, unerasable. Even if you only made one at a time.
Why stop at seven out of ‘magical’ superstition? Talisa had made eight simulacra. Eight spirit-woven bodies to serve as backups if her prime ever died. Hidden in these tanks to rest and recover, or even just preserve good dewy skin.
Nine lives. Down one. No wonder her psionic energy went from ninefold more powerful to suddenly only eightfold.
She could be killed.
In fact, they were making progress. Down one. Eight to go.
The knowledge filled the entombed, cocooned Vilithe. It filled her with such shock that the emotion of surprise alone burst the fae bindings around her, so she was back in her reaver and not in her personal hell. Now she knew what she had to do. She started telepathing to Serun, Juulyn, and Jhynie. Can’t do it alone. Though she hated them, she needed them right now, she couldn’t do this without them. They were all still just elvans right? Just one and the same.
They’re in the tanks! Shoot the fucking tanks!
Jhynie had reloaded and without hesitation pointed her railgun at her closest bacta tank.
Juulyn, recovered from her mind blast, finally pulled out her gun, and pointed it at the closest bacta tank.
Serun stopped shooting futilely at the Mislead and pointed it at the closest bacta tank.
timeStop(); timeStop(); timeStop(); timeStop(); timeStop(); timeStop(); timeStop();
And then all seven of the occupied bacta tanks slid open, a flush of chartreuse ectoplasm and writhing black spirit, and the remaining seven Talisas stepped out, walking casually to their closest target, as the Vidren, or Eilithe if you want to call them that, plus Serun and the Assassin Twins, now found their perception of time contracted to pieces, so that they were in effective paralysis, their bodies jerking around in twisted panic.
Oh no you don’t, I’m not that weak! Jhynie, though she was not talented at using psionics, had developed a resistance to it instead, so that psionics did not work as well on her.
Booyah, she thought, as she put a railgun round on another one of the simulacra, blowing her head wide open.
Two down, seven to go.
And the thing about experiencing a psionic technique…
…is that it is the best way to learn it.
timeStop();
Eidren stepped up before his mother – one of his mothers anyway – and punched her in the face. She had hesitated from cutting him down all this time, that and the distraction of all the unfolding chaos. As he did so he thought, here’s one for all the people out there who had toxic moms. The blow struck the bridge of her nose, and bone shot up and pierced into her cerebellum, killing her instantly.
Three down, six to go.
The blade clattered away and bounced and jumped towards a Talisa- but not the closest one to it.
timeStop(); holdPerson(Talisa Talauth 3);
Vilithe paralyzed one of the Talisas.
And it was then that the rest of Clan Amallark’s forces burst in through the great staircase down to the Inner Sanctum, for they had killed or distracted enough of the simulacra to break Talisa’s cloaking over the secret stairway that only the Archon, Serun, Juulyn, and Jhynie could find. The remaining five Talisas that could move scattered, but a soldier ran up to the paralyzed Talisa and seized her, who thought, no, no, not me, why couldn’t it have been the other ones, I was so close to being prime, I- and then a soldier cut her throat.
Four down, five to go.
timeStop();
Juulyn finally ripped her way out of the Time Stop, but two Talisas were in the middle of strangling her to death after double kubi-nage chokeslam throwing her neck to the ground where they had cover from a burst of Amallarkean gunfire. She was able to bayonet and kill them both, but the rigor mortis of all four of their dead gripped hands cut off any possible oxygen and she died- heroically?
Six down, three to go.
Serun remain time stopped, and the Talisa that was assigned him also throttled him to death, dragging him by the neck all the while to desperately get to cover, but then she got shot by the incoming reinforcements, overburdened by Serun and his carapace.
Seven down, two to go.
Jhynie had missed a few and was reloading again, of course. But because she was ranged, she could kite, back off, and drew away one of the Talisa’s, intent on seizing her railgun from her to press up against her throat and blast as many down as she could in a last stand.
Fortunes can fall as quickly as they rise.
Talisa knew that she was in trouble. The situation was, suffice to say, not going well for her. She had to get into the caves and flee into the cave networks and get away, that was the plan, but she didn’t stick to it. She had wasted so much time on these fools, on her foolish son, that she was now overwhelmed, outnumbered, trapped. She cursed the emotional drama of the situation which had led her to be distracted. She was not mindful.
There was only one way.
A way that seemed unforgivable even to Talisa, and it would be so simple. Proper imprinting requires deletion, and what better way to make room for a whole simulacrum, but a whole mind? Vilithe couldn’t scry what Talisa was about to do to her.
So focused was she on trying to hold person the next Talisa…
That she couldn’t feel…
The secret ninth simulacrum of Talisa, completely astral, unembodied, who had projected right up behind her ear and said ‘boo’, in her reaver...
Morph into a little slug…
And crawl into her ear…
totalDomination.simulacrumInsertion(Vilithe Callethe);
Vilithe! Malevolent had just returned to her body in time after scouting out the inner sanctum, and Mal, in Animus form, strode forward, and nabbed the tail end of the fae body snatcher that had dug itself halfway into Vilithe’s actual ear, and yanked it out, purple wispy fae bleeding and floating away in curling, smoky, cloudy, fae vapor. Vilithe was just able to notice the psionic infiltration hack just in time. It had already partially taken place, just a little bit, and it felt like – it wasn’t so bad it felt like… getting to know… an old friend… just a little bit better – and… cazzo! What the holy high hell was this, Vilithe did not know but she was able to stop it in time before it claimed something truly too deep to know fully, her soul itself, and her sacred and designed body.
psionicSequencer([timeStop(); simulacrum8.greaterHallucination();]
timeStop();
The Archon knew they still had some part to play in the end!
He was home.
And just like that, six random Amallarkeans far above them in the raging battle suddenly had their hearts stop, one, two, and then three at a time, all collapsing and dying instantly. Looks like you have more in common with Ravel Puzzlewell than just an infatuation with a nameless amnesiac, Vi.
What is the sound of one hand clapping?
It was a proper standoff now.
It was reminiscent of Carrie, observed Heyshush.
Be kind to your supports! SHUSH!
Juulyn was so going to fuck his brains out that night, she didn’t care if he didn’t last, she could wait this time. She could wait a whole rote and do it again every time he’s ready. Again, and again, until he was dry and done. At least, once she got the chance, which was hardly assured.
Talisa Classic was dead, supposedly. We can deduce what’s probably going to happen to New Talisa.
This elvan adage remained true: do not fuck with Queens.
It was a vicious pain blast, not dissimilar to the one that Eidren and Vilithe were hit by during the attack on Exasha. To recall: the hallucination of thousands of tiny, burning hooks that dug into the back, pulling the body up into the air.
Damn, that was a close one, she thought. There will be no more mistakes, Tali. Show these fools who’s Queen.
She thought it looked cool.
She was Victor Frankenstein.
And this was her monster.
How heartless to use the beings we create like so. Such as Queen Sidarael’s poor brother.
Numerology? Are we really going there, Lord Voldemort? Well, he might not be the only one…
She was equally superstitious. Though she could have made more, she felt eight was a lucky number, and that she couldn’t afford to commit to more. There was always a chance with too many simulacra, that some may desynchronize and rebel against the Prime.
There’s no I in the word team, right?
Everyone works for everyone else. We couldn’t do without anyone.
An Amallarkean AR-15 platform clone with full picatinny rails all over that was totally, totally tricked out- red dot scope, foregrip, flashlight, and of course, bayonet. It was a breeze to reload, too.
Her secret? Simple. Meditation.
He’d remembered when it last happened, back at his mother’s old headquarters retaken by Exasha after Senjya had cleared it the first time. He made sure to craft his blow to ensure it now.
Indexed by zero, of course, so the first Talisa they killed was Talisa Zero.
Perhaps by Amallarkean standards. Which were low, all things considered.
Way to go Juulyn! A twofer.
Animorph?
Yeerk?
Indexed by zero, of course. The sequencer’s coder, Talisa Zero, the Prime, was already dead. But was Talisa Zero truly the original? And so, the Ninth Simulacrum had no choice in the matter but to speak with Vilithe. For one last time.