Chapter 43 - Vanquish Cathria Pt 3

“I did too! If we’re friends, just let me win!”
The Architect didn’t need to raise its hand like the Spellmites did. It swatted Lillia’s efforts to the side with casual ease.
[Lillia used Indignance - Level 2 - The Spellmite Architect Countered]
Indignance flashed against the Spellmite Architect’s palm as it heaved itself off of the shattered stone tower. Blood poured from multiple wounds across the thing’s stomach where the stone had stabbed into it.
Somehow, the bleeding made it look even more twisted and horrible than it had been.
Once it was up, the Architect doubled over, then plunged one of its arms deep into its chest. More of the inkblood poured out over the stone, sizzling against the heat of Havoc’s broken forge.
There was a horrific crack.
The Architect pulled its fist out of its chest and withdrew the maul from its core. As the weapon emerged, the creature’s spine sagged. Its eye closed. It screamed. Cathria’s voice matched it through the floor.
Lillia looked to Havoc. The hobgoblin had shut his eyes. They weren’t squeezed tight. He looked quiet in the moment, almost peaceful. She called Hooke back to her hand.
It was hurting itself to summon a new weapon.
Lillia could do this.
They could do this.
“Alright, kid,” Havoc said. “Pretty good so far.”
Lillia smiled.
“Don’t fuck it up now.”
“Hey!”
“I’ll take the right stairs.”
Lillia looked down at the Architect on the floor. The last thing she wanted to do was run at that thing, but as it twisted the three remaining arms it had and fire danced across its writhing fingertips Lillia knew she wasn’t allowed to wait.
She ran to the left.
Fire flashed on the edge of the Architect’s fingers as Lillia reached the top of the stairs. The sparks had erupted into proper full flame by the time she was halfway down.
Clearly, at least, destroying the staff had slowed the Spellmite Architect’s ability to cast.
The Architect lowered a hand towards Lillia.
Lillia crushed the Spellmite cloth in her free hand. Iridescent dust spread behind her as she charged down the stairs, and the Chitterpede battlegown shattered into the revealing fire skirt.
God she wished she had the second cloth to break.
The Architect turned its attention as Lillia changed, snapping its hand toward Havoc as Lillia’s new clothes formed from the dust around her.
“No!”
The Spellmite Architect fired the shot. The room boiled and turned red as the fireball flew through the air.
The deafening clang of hammer against steel echoed through the room. Havoc slammed the stairs below him. An anvil crashed down from the ceiling at the same time. The glass stairs shattered below the hobgoblin, and he fell through as the fireball crashed into the gap where he’d been. A torrent of flame erupted on impact, climbing to the ceiling and spreading out along it.
Lillia realized she’d slowed to watch what happened with Havoc so she tried to run even faster down the stairs. Almost tripping on the way as the Architect turned its attention to her. It brought the maul to bear, swinging it overhead toward Lillia.
She was still too high to want to jump, but Lillia jumped off the stairs. Catching herself with the Ambusher boots with a swift kick before she hit the floor. She still hit the tiles too hard, stumbling and losing momentum on landing.
Lillia was more dexterous than before, but there were limits.
The maul slammed into the stairway where Lillia had been. The glass spider-webbed. Cracked. Shattered all at once. Glass shards shot in every direction as the stairs exploded into a thousand pieces, scattered to every wind at once.
Lillia dove to dodge the larger chunks. Half of them as large as her head. She hit the floor hard and struggled to keep the air in her lungs.
Everything froze.
Cathria’s voice echoed in Lillia’s head. Then everywhere.
“Did you think beating an archmage was that easy? Hobgoblin?”
Lillia looked up.
Havoc had charged forward, getting under the maul and heading toward the Architect’s head. His axe found purchase in it.
“You don’t know the half of it!”
Black blood poured from the Architect’s head. Havoc took the archmage at her word, jumping back as soon as the blow had landed. He reset himself as Lillia scrambled to her feet.
“An archmage you’re friends with?” Havoc yelled across to Lillia.
“It’s a long story!” Lillia called back.
As Lillia spoke the wound in the Architect’s head split open with a deep squelch that shot up Lillia’s spine like a jolt. The maul crashed to the ground.
A human hand made of the same black ink of the spellmites grabbed the skin of the Architect and peeled it back.
Havoc charged. A rune appeared in the air in front of him and caught his axe mid-swing. The weapon shot backward like it had been fired out of a cannon. Havoc lost grip on it as it went flying to the other side of the room.
A second hand emerged.
Havoc raised his hand to the ceiling. There was a thunderous clang as another anvil fell from the sky.
The anvil vanished on the way down for a moment and then landed beside the head of the Architect harmlessly.
The blood pouring out of the Architect’s head went red.
“Come on, you’re already dead! Stop blocking!”
[Lillia used Indignance - Level 2 - The Spellmite Architect Countered]
There was a shower of sparks in front of the wound. Then the Architect’s head deflated all at once, crumpling in on itself, the skin tearing all the way.
Several feet above the ruined head, Cathria hung in the air, made of ichor. Her cloak billowed behind her. Two searing red eyes where her glass should have been, and a final third splitting down the middle of her chest.
“What the fuck?” Havoc asked.
The inky form snapped its fingers and the maul disappeared from the Architect’s hand and snapped into hers as a staff.
She was shaped like a human. How resilient could she be? Cathria had been a mage after all.
Lillia sprang to her feet and crossed the distance between them as fast as she could. On the way, she crushed chitterpede into dust to change her shoes, then snapped one Ambusher feather. Two. Three.
The Ambusher blade corset snapped on top of the usual slip and coat. For a brief moment, a pair of white and tan wings flashed behind Lillia’s person, as brilliant as the Ambusher’s had been against the sun.
Lillia flashed forward, covering the last feet before Cathria in an instant. She was already mid-swing when she appeared in front of the mage.
Cathria, already floating, moved several feet back. Lillia’s swing fell short. Hooke cut the air between them. as the Ambusher’s piercing cry rang out.
“Oh come on!”
[Lillia used Indignance - Level 2 - The Spellmite Architect Countered]
Sparks cascaded between Lillia and the Archmage as the latter spun her staff in one hand. The thing became a black blur as Lillia’s eyes went wide.
The staff made contact with Lillia’s chest as she crushed the chitterpede in her hands. The chitin barely had time to form across her skin before the inky staff crashed into Lillia’s ribs. She felt like she’d been hit by the Architect’s giant maul.
But she was stuck in place.
‘Cathria’ spun the staff again, wheeling it around at Lillia.
A thunderous boom filled the room.
“Hot!”
Lillia pulled the burnmite cloth out and tore it with her teeth as the broken forge Havoc had summoned earlier flared to life under Cathria.
The harsh smell of soot filled the air.
Cathria cocked her head.
A pillar of fire erupted from the broken forge, carrying melted stone and metal in its wake. The fire washed over Lillia. She felt the impossible heat on her mostly exposed skin but didn’t burn.
She smelled Cathria getting torched by the flame.
Lillia fell, dropping out of the hold Cathria had on her and tumbling down through the fire and down onto the stone. The massive pillar of flame sputtered and ceased as she landed, leaving Lillia stumbling backward across a pile of half-melted rock before her dress decided that was more than one instance of fire damage.
“You okay?” Havoc asked.
Lillia offered a half-hearted thumbs up as she used Hooke to prop herself up.
“Good quick change,” Havoc added.
“What was your plan if I didn’t?”
He hesitated. “I knew you would.”
Lillia’s hair stood on end, snapping her back into the fight.
Cathria was back where Lillia had run from. Her inky skin sizzled. Her hair and robe were smoking.
Her staff was blessed with lightning.
“Havoc. You’re my champion for this.”
Havoc nodded. Rose-gold shimmered over his skin.
The clasp of the Usurper’s Cloak burned hot on Lillia’s neck after storing multiple absorbed hits.
“Get me close?” Lillia asked.
“I’ll do what I can.”
Lillia didn’t know what that was going to be, but it was going to have to be enough.
She dropped Hooke back into her inventory for a moment. She pulled out materials in both hands and briefly disappeared into a whirlwind of iridescent dust that shimmered in the sputtering flames of the broken forge. Thundersteps. Second level battlegown.
Cathria leveled her staff. Lillia called Hooke back to her hand. Havoc got low, ready to sprint.
Lillia moved first, taking off slightly to the left as Cathria swung her staff. Two small bolts erupted from the end of the archmage’s weapon, cutting through the air and carving a path to Lillia.
Havoc stomped on the floor. A work-bench forged itself out of the stone between the women. The bolts shattered against it. The stone broke down the middle. Lillia tore around the left side of the bench as it crumbled to dust.
Thirty feet.
Cathria spun her staff. Thunder rumbled above Lillia. She kept sprinting. Havoc lifted a hand. A clang matched the thunder as an anvil appeared in the sky and caught the bolt. Havoc called out to Lillia.
“RIGHT!”
Lillia dove to the side. The thunderstruck anvil crashed down to the tile beside her, sending stone and glass into the air.
As she scrambled back to her feet Lillia held Hooke out, ready to strike.
Twenty feet.
Cathria swung her staff for a second time. More of the small bolts shot off the end. One to either side of Lillia. She just kept running straight. She’d missed.
Ten feet.
Cathria lowered her staff once Lillia had committed to the charge. Shattered glass and broken stone rose into the air around her as static charged through her hair. Blue, searing light coalesced at the end of her staff.
Oh. She hadn’t missed.
“Lillia!”
Havoc was behind her. Then, all at once, he was in front of Lillia. His makeshift armor looked like it belonged as it shone with the rose-gold power of being Lillia’s champion. He held his arms out in front of himself, blocking the spell with nothing.
But then something was there.
[Lillia’s Knight Used - Crown’s Bulwark!]
A massive golden shield of light erupted between Havoc and Cathria. The archmage’s spell shot off, a bolt of lightning crashing into the shield. Both sparked.
The room went white.
Lillia could still see Cathria’s black form in the middle of the searing light.
She could see the glass eyes underneath the red.
She could see her shot.
Lillia stepped on Havoc’s back, and then the shield of light as she leapt into the air. She passed the threshold and she felt her lower half burning as she was exposed to the clash. She hissed, and forced the scream to erupt as words.
“I am the Princess here! And you will bow to me, Cathria!”
[Lillia used Run the Court - Highly Effective Against the Spellmite Architect!]
Cathria fell forward. The spell broke. Lillia’s words fell back into a scream as she swung Hooke down with both hands. Hooke seared with purpose. Metal cut through the hat, then the spine of the Archmage. It bit inky flesh.
Then glass.
For one impossible instant, Lillia saw the real shape inside the ichor: not flesh, not bone, but a lattice of black glass holding a woman’s outline together.
Cathria shattered.
Lillia flew through the breaking glass. Crashing to the ground behind her as shining dust fell through the air. Impossible pain shot through her legs, then all at once it didn’t as Lillia rolled across the glass and stone. Lillia’s body didn’t know whether to scream or give up.
Lillia chose screaming, and did her best to twist it into a victory cry.
[SPELLMITE ARCHITECT VANQUISHED]
The victory cry faded to sobs, but Lillia held back the tears that should have come along with it.
“Holy shit, kid,” Havoc said. “We won!”
“We did,” Lillia said as she stared at the bottom of the glass center platform. Her answer was weak. Slightly broken.
[The Darkness Fades. Your Hearth’s Light Warms Your Soul.]
“Oh good,” Lillia said. “Now we can die. Now that we won.”
“Good timing. Hate this place,” Havoc said. He was above Lillia. He winced as he looked at her condition.
That was weird, it didn’t hurt that much.
He offered a hand.
Lillia took the hand and tried to help herself up. Her muscles screamed. Worse than that, nothing happened.
What remained of the original Architect’s massive corpse burned away into nothing on the floor as Lillia fell forward. She whimpered as she hit the stone.
Her skirt had burned away in ragged lines. Below it, her legs looked wrong in ways her mind refused to name.
She couldn’t feel most of the burns anymore. That probably wasn’t good.
Havoc took his hand back.
“Ah fuck, kid. That looks bad.”
“My legs?” Lillia asked.
“Wouldn’t call them yours anymore,” Havoc said. Lillia didn’t know when she’d let go of Hooke, but Havoc grabbed it. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
“Havoc. What are you doing?”
“I don’t think this stuff is fixable, kid,” Havoc said as he took a knee beside Lillia. “Gotta take care of business before it starts to hurt.”
“Right. I have a potion. I can—” Havoc was right. It was starting to hurt more. Lillia hissed. “Lemme just…” It hurt to talk. Full sentences were hard.
“Kid,” he began. “You told me yourself. Skeleton said we don’t need to worry about dying unless it’s those dark places.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can carry your stuff back for you.”
“Havoc?”
“I’ll take care of all the stuff.”
“Havoc?!” Lillia couldn’t manage much panic in her voice. At least not enough to catch up with what she knew was coming.
“Close your eyes, kid.”
“And I feel great! Fine even. My legs are just a little—”
“Lillia.” Havoc pulled up Hooke.
“Havoc! I’ll be okay you don’t need to—”
Havoc’s jaw worked once. Whatever he wanted to say, he swallowed it.
“Good news. We’re even now.”