The light given off from Hellig’s figure seemed to dim noticeably. A chill crept through the air, and ice began to spread on the surface of the murky water around the three figures.
“Sister.”
Hellig gripped his halberd tightly, knuckles turning nearly white. Adam, for his part, kept his distance and readied his go-to spell, the ruby bolt spell that he was familiar with. While he wasn’t able to manifest its full power, he was confident that he could back Hellig up.
Hrime leisurely twirled one of her pale fingers in her jet-black hair, a slight smile on her face.
“Is that any way to greet family? Why, last time I saw you, you tried to kill me.”
Her smile widened. Like a beast getting ready to pounce at prey.
“You don’t have a divinity to save you now.”
Hrime’s tone took on a whimsical, almost childish quality to it.
“Though you are still my brother, so I suppose I’ll let you and your friend live if you give me my birthright back.”
“Hrime, it’s useless to you. I couldn’t give it to you if I tried, you know this. Why are you pretending like we haven’t had this argument before? The pair don’t do anything, our family has tried to bring them together before. I’m harmonized with it, it’s not possible to just disharmonize, not without turning into a monster.”
Hrime, for her part, actually let Hellig talk.
“I can’t give you my birthright sister, I am one with it.”
Hrime’s smile was like piercing snow flitting through the air.
“Oh, brother. You really haven’t learned anything these past few years have you? I, for one, actually understand my birthright.”
Hrime manifested her halberd in her hands. Its dark black metal form contrasted sharply with the icy blue energy surrounding its edge.
“Since you’re both about to die, I guess I’ll enlighten you.”
Hrime stepped forwards. Hellig and Adam shuffled backwards.
“The key isn’t to bring the items together physically, it's to harmonize with both at the same time. Our ancestor wasn’t harmonized with one Realm. He was harmonized with two.”
Hellig scoffed.
“That’s impossible. Nobody can harmonize with more than one Realm at once. Everyone knows that.”
Hrime stepped forwards. Hellig and Adam shuffled backwards.
“Then what is a three line honorific? Why does the Many Winged Angel have five lines? How could a single demigod and a few Chosen possibly defeat a Devil?”
Hrime took a step forward. Hellig and Adam shuffled backwards.
“You know who else has a five line honorific? The only other being is the Abyss. You know, the thing that goes out of its way to eat divinities as lunch?”
Hrime’s smile beamed, and the ice thickened on the murky water around the three of them.
“A three line honorific pertains to an Instrument, brother. Like our birthright. It is an item, or a being directly spawned from the will of a Realm. If you harmonize with an Instrument, you can claim divine authority over a Realm you aren’t fully harmonized with.”
Hrime took a step forward. Hellig and Adam shuffled backwards.
“Without misharmonizing.”
Hellig shook his head.
“Why are you telling me this? We don’t have to fight, we are both Chosen of our individual Realms, there’s never been a good reason to do this!”
Hrime frowned and readied her halberd.
“Wasn’t it obvious? I was stalling for time. I’m not letting something happen against my expectations this time. I conducted a ritual underneath the hamlet here to create a spiritual barrier, any moment now and it’ll go off once the seal I placed gets eaten through. Three, two, one…”
Splash!
The murky waters around the hamlet shot upwards, forming a massive circular wall of dark, slightly icy water. Hellig and Adam were boxed in.
Adam felt his head buzz with a light headed sensation. Ringing sounded in his ears, and he immediately was struck with a headache. Hellig started bleeding from his nose. Hrime’s smile was as bright as the moon of the Physical World.
“My reason has always been the same, brother. I can only ascend if I fully harmonize with the Instrument. And you have the other half. You, likewise, can only ascend with my half. Thus, I need to kill you. Sorry, not sorry.”
Hrime shot out a spear of ice towards Hellig, who intercepted with his halberd, causing splinters of ice to land around him. Adam launched the ruby beam he had been readying towards Hrime. The beam melted the ice and evaporated water in its path, but Hrime deftly dodged, causing it to impact a small hut a ways behind her. The structure lit like the noonday sun before swiftly evaporating into ash and dust.
Hrime dashed towards Adam, lunging towards his eyes with her halberd, but Hellig formed a lasso out of light, twisting it around her ankle and yanking her backwards towards him. He went in for a bodyslam, but Hrime twisted in mid-air unnaturally, escaping the lasso and slashing Hellig’’s face with the edge of her halberd. A shallow cut, but firstblood all the same.
SHUNK!
As Hrime landed on the ground, she was forced to twirl her halberd in front of her body to block a wave of sonic energy launched at her from Adam. Hellig lunged forward, narrowly missing her as she twisted her body with the momentum of the sonic boom and landed a heavy kick into his side, sending him flying a full two meters.
Ice spikes rained down from the air, grazing Adam’s face, arms and back. Hellig was able to block a number of them, but was taken by surprise when Hrime flitted into his range and kneed him in the stomach. Capitalizing on the moment, she elbowed his back with a resounding crack, sending Hellig forwards. A spike of ice shot out of the freezing, murky water, slicing into part of his right calf as he failed to dodge in time.
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Hrime lunged in for a lethal blow with her halberd, but was intercepted by an orb of light thrown by Adam, causing the blow to go wildly off-course and only graze Hellig’s arm.
Not yet powerless, Hellig used his momentum to twist around into a backhanded sweep of his own weapon, which Hrime was forced to block and back away from.
Adam readied another casting of the ruby beam spell he had grown to depend on so much, but faltered.
Something isn’t…right.
“Hellig, I don’t think we’re safe here, something is wrong!”
Hellig swiftly dashed backwards towards Adam as Hrime’s smile grew, but she quickly looked up into the murky sky. Hellig, too, looked up. Their collective spiritual perceptions were triggering warning signs. An oily sensation permeated the surroundings, emanating from Adam, who was brought to his knees briefly. His sensation of time and history blurred, and he saw a vague collection of sights and sensory stimulation. Like a dam breaking, he was unable to stop the flood of images in his mind.
…
An infinite expanse of black, oily water.
A spiritual presence, vast beyond measure, getting closer.
A small, barely stable pinprick of light floating amidst this expanse of dark liquid.
A star in the sky, bleeding to the ground. Its light becomes tainted with the darkness of the liquid as a spiritual presence violates it.
A grotesque monster, a veritable kraken, dragging a fleet of ships underneath the waves.
A twisting and twirling dancer playing a violin made of a gravitational mass. Her body is invisible against the backdrop of darkness, only the contours of her dress visible due to the pure white light given off.
A newborn child in a white crib, a woman with black hair comforting it as the insides of its intestines are corrupted with dark, oily water.
Adam himself on a crucifix.
A man in a white robe without a face, pulling strings. Strings emanate from his own body, pulled by an unseen force.
A cluster of mushroom spores, drifting in an empty expanse of darkness.
…
Adam gasped, a sense of impending doom wafting over him. Hellig was in between him and Hrime, his halberd raised in a defensive position. Hrime scoffed.
“And here I thought something was coming this way. I have to give it to you, whatever spell you just pulled, it really did make my spiritual perception think that a divinity was nearby.”
Adam, still gasping, barely stood up.
“It wasn’t a spell, I didn’t pull anything. Something…big past us by.”
Hellig lowered his halberd into a position easy to lunge with.
“Sister, please, let us put this all behind us and simply be Chosen of our respective Realms. I can help you escape from the cult.”
Hrime scoffed.
“I’m not some prisoner of a cult, I’m working with the Whispering Maiden through a proxy directly. I have no shackles on me. You, however…”
Ice shot up from the waters below Hellig, binding his hands and feet with thick, chain-like structures. He struggled, emitting a large amount of light in an attempt to melt the chains, but it was too slow.
Hrime jumped into the air, sending a trio of large ice javelins towards Hellig, who was still immobile. Adam attempted to use a sonic boom to throw them off course, but failed, collapsing down with blood spurting from his mouth.
Spurt. Spurt. Spurt.
Hellig was impaled three times. Once in his lower intestine, once through his ribs and into his liver, and once into his collarbone. He screamed in pain. Hrime dashed forwards, and this time, Hellig and Adam were unable to move backwards. The ice chains dropped off him, and he sank to one knee. Hrime smiled, her white teeth shining in the murky Realm. She raised her halberd into the air.
“Finally. It took me years, I had to work with a Devil. I had to accept the petty machinations of a demigod. But finally, I have this moment. Aah, do I relish it, brother… Goodbye.”
The dark metal halberd swung down, and stopped abruptly.
Tap, tap, tap.
The sound of a metal cane striking a metal floor reverberated through the broken hamlet.
“I would appreciate it if you don’t harm one of my students. Ms. Hrime.”
The waters surrounding the hamlet all fell back to the ground, settling into their natural form. At the edge of the hamlet was a man dressed in a sharp suit. In his hands he held a cane with a wolf head at the tip, a mercurial luster slinking through the object into the base.
Hrime immediately jumped backwards a half dozen meters, making a tsk sound under her breath.
Hellig struggled to stand, but was unable to effectively do so.
Juhend Sureb slowly and simply moved towards Hrime. At this point, fear was evident in her eyes, but she had not yet attempted to flee. Not fully, at least.
“You should be nicer to your brother, Hrime. He may not be the brightest out there, but he certainly gives great effort to be.”
Juhend passed the point where Adam lay prostrated on the ground and where Hellig kneeled in the muck. He didn’t stop advancing forwards.
Hrime shot out a volley of icy spikes towards Juhend. They dissipated before they were a meter away from her.
“The use of magic relies on one’s senses. We must envision the appropriate memories or environmental effect for it to apply to the real world.”
Hrime’s fear grew. She lunged forward with her halberd, but was left in shock as the item dissolved in her hands. Like dust in the wind, the minute particulates of the magical item fluttered into the air.
“To maintain the form of a magical item we are harmonized with, one must have the sense of harmonization with that item. Without it, the item cannot be manifested.”
Juhend advanced, and Hrime turned to run. Falling flat on her face, she found that she could not move her lower body.
“To be able to exert influence on our body, we must first be able to sense our body.”
Juhend reached the spot where Hrime was motionless on the ground.
“Ms. Hrime, I’m afraid your stars simply weren’t right tonight.”
He gripped his cane, and brought it up high in the air, ready to strike down at the defenseless Chosen below him.
“Wait!”
The strike halted in midair.
Hellig finally stood up.
“She’s still my sister. I can’t just let her die. Not here, like this…”
Juhend glanced back.
“I’m afraid I don’t have the time tonight to deal with any of this further.”
The tap of the cane hitting the ground was audible through the hamlet.
“Ms. Hrime, keep in mind what I said today about sensory perception. Oh, and one last thing. In order for our physical forms to be present in a Realm, we must be able to sense that Realm. Goodbye, Ms. Hrime.”
Hrime’s scream of searing pain swiftly disappeared as her body turned translucent. She was banished from the Realm.
Juhend didn’t look back towards Hellig or Adam. Instead, he checked a watch on his wrist. Sighing, he slammed his cane down on the ground below him and Shifted back to the Physical World in a rush.
Hellig was left teetering, his sense of balance uneasy. Behind him, Adam was laying on the ground, struggling to stand. In front of him, the remains of a hamlet lay strewn for hundreds of meters to any side.
He didn’t seem like He was here for us…
