Nomora’s confining body diverged out of the shadows to silently walk next to her liege’s side in her physical form. Overlooking the city from one of the highest balconies of the Cathedral situated at the focal point between the higher commercial areas and the Church’s own districts, the monumental architectural mass offered a wide bird’s eye view over its surroundings… including the Great Plaza, where some unsavoury happenstances were happening under watchful eyes.

  “Right on time, Nomora”, he said, without turning to her, his mask still turned downwards, a hand lightly resting over his staff. Nomora strided soundlessly to his side, and she would have to climb herself to the balustrades before standing on them to be able to witness the scene of attention. An amusing thought. Part of the balustrade was in the shades. Good for her. It would avoid some rather unbecoming movements.

  She answered her liege’s unasked question as she advanced forwards.

  “The reports are clear: our intruder entered the inner city yesterday, was declared as being clear of undead or demonic curses by qualified personnel, and rested in Southern Solace’s innchurch while presenting herself as a mage. However, during this week’s Novel Spell Contest, Confessor Aema was able to confirm undoubtedly that this ‘Victorya’, fifteen years old, from unknown origin, but declaring herself of the wastes, thought of herself as, and I quote, ‘both a mage and sorceress or none of them at all’.”

  “A most perturbing case, yes, for one so young to be this powerful”, her liege replied. “Greater powers must certainly be meddling. Perhaps she owes her fealty to one of those two gods of no killing. There have been no casualties, so far, and yet, her spells could easily maim. Yet there is some degree of strategy and precision in her movements, it is not just a child flailing around their recently obtained gifts. The lack of casualties might also be speaking of highly purposeful precision.”

  Nomora settled lightly on top of the intricately sculpted handrail. Her clawed feet easily found a strong grip on it. She looked down upon the Great Plaza, still dwarfed by His Holiness’s presence. It disrupted a bit her senses, but not as greatly as it used to. It didn’t stop her from catching the sight she observed, down below.

  “She does move like someone who has fighting experience”, she agreed, and her liege hummed back. He seemed deep in thought. Perhaps the question of the intruder’s loyalties troubled him.

  She blinked, and her entire vision shifted in strange forms, seeing the changing flows of the ethereal world. Small figures irradiating from mana were grouped in a wide circle. No flow seemed to be wildly pulsing into the city from the outside. At least, not yet.

  “Could she have an oath to one of them? She certainly is a stranger, but… that seems so very unlikely, my Liege” she asked. That was most perturbing. Those were gods from quite foreign lands, which had always been for the best in her opinion. Unholy, lawful freaks. The tales of the horrors done to their lands had even spread here. There were worse things than being killed.

  “I do not recall them having such…”, his Holiness spoke, lightly, “…symphonic spells. And if my memory serves me right, they did not have such an expansive repertoire that our fellow intruder has so abundantly displayed. Such a variety of… gifts. Possessed by what is by all accounts a child… there are greater troubles amiss.”

  Emperor Alberon then chuckled. It was a light, ancient sound. It made Nomora’s entrails curl, as unceremonious work with her liege often allowed her to forget of his most godly attributes.

  A mistake most people wouldn’t make twice.

  “How amusing that I mistook her for a boy, at first”, he peacefully said. “That did slow down our research”.

  “Her phasing spells did seem most alarming, my liege. Those are… I believe, part of a high tier specialised branch of spatial magic that even I haven’t explored, and she abuses their use severely”, Nomora spoke. “That and her ability to hide from you did push towards the lead of being a skilled assassin sent by enemy forces. A godsent one from the Black Scourge, perhaps-

  “At first”, her liege interrupted her, stricken by a thought, perhaps, his tone slightly off, as though solely focused on what lay beneath his eyes, “there seemed to be no mana signature. But it is there. Barely perceptible, but there. I can feel it now, if I focus where she is. It flickers. But it hides… only from my eyes. How curious that Lilyn was able to detect her far more easily than me, is it not?”

  Nomora nodded, seeing that heavy mask turn towards her. Its long spines and branches remained static. She waited for the question. It came like a gentle, curious breeze.

  “How well can you sense her, Nomora?” he said.

  Nomora stared down at the battlefield.

  There was a mana signature that was oozing power terrifyingly more than others, as though a spell was being incanted.

  She gazed back at her liege.

  “She is a vibrant spot of light in a dark, moonless night, your Eminence”, she said. But for someone as well atuned as herself, it wasn’t much trouble to sense it ever since the battle had begun raging.

  He brought a closed hand under his chin and hummed.

  “…All the more curious…” he hummed. “Such intricacies, to hide, specifically from me… but why? She has to be the most careless assassin in existence. Perhaps she faced a simple stroke of bad luck?”

  “You speak of the happenstance at the marketplace, my liege?” she said, cooling her expression. Oh, she had received those news from her little watchful shades with an extremely amused smile.

  “Yes”, he said, simply, as though that simple world could summarise that what had at first appeared to be a foolish, soon to be imprisoned foreign blasphemer having dared to crash into their God turned out to be a proficient magic user that had even been able to escape His Gaze.

  “That still does not explain why she attempted the Novel Spell Contest”, she said. “Why take such an… absurd detour? Simply for the sake of greed? Was the prize that appealing? But doing such thing is insanity while needing to escape from You.”

  Her liege lazily motioned his hand in the air, pointing now at the Plaza, before closing his fist on it as though he could seize it.

  “A young girl, playing assassin because of some gained fighting experience, having been heavily blessed by many divinities of simple aspects or a single god of many faces… sent to my city to assassinate me, but fooled by bad luck”, he said. “A most probable story. Perhaps she was born gifted, too… as that could explain the width of her repertoire… But to send such a promising resource to be wasted by not training it enough… What sort of unheard of simple-minded, half-witted, farcical god has sprouted of the ground while I was not looking?”

  Nomora allowed herself a dark chortle. The thought of such an easily defeasible foe would be the sweetest of blessings. Or it would simply be a statement to the decay of the world, for such a divinity to be able to survive so uninventively.

  “That was a question, Nomora”, he sternly replied.

  That startled her a little bit.

  Nomora let herself have just the smile then. They had worked with each other for long enough to allow some degree of informality, but Emperor Alberon could prove to be quite inflexible.

  “Ah, my liege, my little shadows bring no news of that sort”, she deferentially said. “There is still some agitation from the necroarchians through what appears to be their soon to bloom civil war”, she said, with a certain kind of subdued glee that came with the soothing feeling of a plan well schemed coming to fruition, “…and the Moonchurch has begun quite strange rituals, which worrying effects should soon be able to be seen in the night sky. I planned on deeply expanding recently acquired knowledge on the subject of tonight’s Counsel meeting, and that may wait, if you wish it so. But there are no new raising gods in the horizon, my Liege. Not since a few centuries, for sure.”

  And her liege did quite know who was that last one to raise the level field.

  “Do keep looking, Nomora”, he said. “But do it with intent, this time. Perhaps no oddities echoed within magic itself as we did not look deeper into…”

  His voice faltered.

  Emperor Alberon lowered his hand. Magic wavered around his head, surrounding his ears.

  He hummed, deep in thought. Ah, so he had received news.

  “Ah, Lilyn tells me that that our intruder has… no connection to any… divinity. Or perhaps she has a bond so entrenched with one that that tie cannot be severed. Perhaps… worse, she could have a too powerful patron for Lilyn to dispel its link. Ah, decisions… what to make of this… how troublesome.”

  What? No patron-god? That… no, it wouldn’t make any sense.

  Abruptly, the plaza down below shifted, all its shape wavering as magic within the plaza blew outwards, distorting its flows, propelled away by a powerful spell.

  Nomora’s eyes blew wide.

  And lo and behold, their stranger was holding a… a four, perhaps five metres tall sword of mana shifting flows, enrapturing her magic surroundings towards it, syphoning the ambient mana to… most likely strengthen itself, if not to effectively dispel external spells. The complexity of that spell- it spoke of mastery. It was an astounding work of art, if it was a stable one.

  She felt a little awe as she behold it. Truly, this was the work of a master of their craft- and- and it had been confirmed that it had been done by… what, a fifteen years old? And she had no patron god? This young human… was a genius. A genius in the making. That girl- she gulped. That girl was their enemy. How dreadful.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  She still couldn’t make quite any sense of Lilyn’s connection breaking spell not working.

  It made no sense for such a… child to be this powerful on her own. It had been confirmed that she wasn’t under a demonic contract, too.

  …This might prove to be difficult.

  She blinked, returning her gaze to the physical plaza. Right, her liege might need her eyes as his were lacking with this precise foe.

  “My liege, that… spell, it’s… it absorbs mana from its current surroundings. It might even prove to be powerful enough to absorb weaker spells themselves without trouble”, she warned.

  Her liege didn’t even waver. A perfectly still tall figure stood at her left.

  He let out a single, intrigued mutter, until he spoke up.

  “I suppose I shall join my followers, at long last”, he said. “With the proper resources, this should be handled before dusk. Nomora, you know who to send as reinforcements. There will be no need for you on the battlefield. Your duties await.”

  Nomora gave a nod of acknowledgement back. It was a bit of a shame. She could have enjoyed a challenging fight for once, but alas, her duties called. It had been perhaps a too long time since she’d been working from the shadows. But she wouldn’t dare complain. She did have her own important missions to complete. This had been enough of a distraction from her task of finding the metaphorical poisoned wells.

  He tapped his staff on the ground, and branches embedded in the very rock of the cathedral shifted harmoniously, without even disrupting its building stones, slowly creeping over his form. The mana flowing through them burst with an abrupt vitality, and before her liege disappeared from view, she heard him quietly snicker.

  “It truly is lucky that she ended up at the ancient coliseum. My roots… run deep, there."

  And her liege, after having long observed and discussed the enemy’s movements, left only a warbled void of slowly retreating branches as he teleported away to that timeworn arena, used again as it once was designed to be.

  ___

  Oh golly, oh jolly, oh broccoli.

  Falling through the air, Vic slammed her magic sword on the ground, that cracked while dust and sand blew outwards. Her legs flailed a bit in the air above her head as the tad bit overtly numerous spells deviated towards the sky thanks to the blast. They dissolved with a weird soundless whimper in the air, becoming nothing more than windy traces across the sky.

  It was really a shame that she wasn’t powerful enough yet to create a shockwave capable of sending her foes flying through the air. She wasn’t there yet. Not yet. Heheh.

  She dislodged a bit difficultly the sword from the ground, her shadow claws helping tremendously in that task, and raised it once more above her head.

  “BEHOLD!”, she yelled out, with a tone that heavily implied that she was bringing new, never heard of before information that would be crucial to their fight, “I have a big sword!”

  She waved around the big sword, rejoicing in the way she saw weapons in soldiers’s hands retract in their tensing grips. None of them had ever come in close combat, despite their numbers and their buffs. The super big range of her sword might have been a strong deterrent.

  Vic squinted. She hated how slow she’d been to just edge ever so closer to the southern parts of the plaza. She was pretty close to the edge though. But their defence was unfairly strong, like a tightening grip that tried to trip her every step of the way out. They didn’t fail so far, but they had to be getting tired. Those guards were insufferable in their stubbornness.

  Cultists weren’t human, were they? Of course not. If they didn’t behave like humans, they didn’t deserve to be treated as one.

  …But it felt icky to think of killing them like monsters on this cloudy mood-dampening day. Why was that being so difficult? Why now of all moments? She couldn’t hesitate! So why was she?? This wasn’t like her at all!

  ‘Hesitation is the start of death’, a voice echoed.

  “Tsk”, she said back.

  With her sword still lazily waving around, her eyes followed the shifting of the flow of the soldiers, and she saw raised shields slowly advancing, grouping up behind a pre-existing group. Oh. Doing that again? Protecting a bunch of spellcasters creating a peculiarly strong thorny spell? Really? Again?

  Like that had worked the previous two times?

  Ha, even that cowardly high priestess had taken out to hiding behind the lines to wait for a lucky strike or an opening made by her troops.

  She rushed abruptly three metres to the left, leaping ruthlessly towards the weaker flank of the two they’d left less protected as a consequence.

  Her sword met a startled shield, which pulsed with a protective magic shield of its own that grated for a single second. Rage oozed from her eyes. She seethed as she saw the close up of the soldier’s afraid face beneath his helmet. Sweating beads fell across his forehead and the brown hair that was stuck to it, wide opened eyes staring straight back at her in disbelief and dread. His pale eyes seemed not quite there, as though he was seeing his own life flashing before his eyes.

  The magic shield broke. The full non-existent mass of her swirling magic sword fell down on the sleek metal slab serving him as a shield, and it swung down through it like it was butter.

  She deviated the blow at the last thread of a second, sending the grievously dented shield flying. She quickly followed with a jabbing motion with her free hand, grabbing easily his head with her fully encompassing shadow armoured claws and throwing him towards the larger group that had formed. She barely had the time to grab the blade of the non-magic sword that had been aiming at her chest by the other soldier that had been a moment before standing still in shock next to the ragdoll of a warrior she’d sent flying through the air.

  Vic focused really hard on her shadow grip. Like that, she could even make the metal grind, bending it ever so slightly. She smiled manically, and looked up to the soldier.

  And yet again, she was faced with the terrified expressions of someone that looked too young and too green to have ever faced the horrors outside of the walls of their city.

  It was a woman this time. Armour did not fit her. Young. But taller than Vic herself. It was funny to smile manically to all those people that were taller than her as she soundly beat down their bodies and morale.

  Why were there so many young soldiers there? Were there any veterans in those ranks? Was this a garrison made at the last minute in a minute? Ah, they were probably a mixed group.

  Oh shit, were more experienced guards soon coming to help those?

  Vic flung her closed shadow fist at the woman’s face, and something broke beneath it, because she certainly heard a crunch. And yeah, the shrill yell afterwards confirmed it. She threw that one aside too for good measure. It would be fun not to break that habit.

  The whole attack had lasted something close to five seconds.

  The first soldier she’d sent flying through the air like a basketball crashed onto the larger group as the other rolled and rolled and rolled on the ground. A sickening crunch from the first came and a continued scream indicated that bones might have been broken a little bit. Eh. The buff from the high priestess had saved him from the worst for sure. He’d be fine. She’d tested the waters before and he should be just fine.

  She looked up to the two other soldiers that were racing in without hesitation before her and nearly felt the urge to swear. They seemed to be so ready to die to protect the measly wall behind them, as though her escaping through climbing was the worst thing that could happen to them. Not killing anyone and getting out of there was starting to look really, really unlikely.

  They’d taken notice she hadn’t killed. It didn’t matter if she looked as feral as possible, if she didn’t kill, the fear of death would not kick in. Fanatics were a pain. She hated, hated cultists. And those cultists weren’t facing the threat of death.

  But she could somehow imagine that next soldier thinking “oh golly! I can’t wait to head back home to my kids, it’s been so tough since I lost my wife to the Black Plague! It sure would suck to die and to leave them to be raised by the cultiest of cults to be used as fodder for some sort of dark machination that somehow requires the blood of the innocent!”

  The wind whipped around her blade.

  How dare they make her conflicted about such a straight simple task that didn’t require an afterthought. Cultists were the scum of this dust-ridden world and needed to be treated as such.

  She swung not the edge but the flat of her sword against the two soldiers, purposefully avoiding looking at their faces and sending them crashing five metres away, armour and all, hearing again screams of pain, as oh yeah that had to be the familiar sound of a dislocating shoulder. She prepared herself to make the jump to leap on the wall. Also better be quick because this felt like the moment where their groups would send in another flurry of spells. But regarding her outtake of power… If she was less careful about it, necks could be broken. Focus. She needed to keep herself focused.

  Being merciful was the privilege of the overtly powerful, but at this rhythm she was going to run straight out of mercy. She swore between her teeth. She needed to keep them frightened and guessing.

  And screamed for all to hear:

  “WHERE is the CHALLENGE? WHERE are your real warriors? WHERE are your GODS?”, she turned around. “WHERE are they HIDING, you cowa-”

  She was hit by a blast of ice and felt her entire shadow armour screech like a living animal as the pressure dug against her magic layer of shadowy protection.

  Vic hissed, and began twisting her huge ass magic sword through the mass of shrieking ice. The ice had already weakened around the blade. With cold, focused eyes, Vic grit her teeth and spun it around, breaking and cutting its growth as her shadow armour started protesting more and more. The icicles didn’t pierce it. The frost spread over her skin however as the temperature dropped so much she wasn’t shivering, she was shaking as the shock rushed through her skin.

  A status effect redundantly popped up, warning her that she was “chilled” in case that wasn’t obvious enough to her already.

  She had seconds, probably, before the pressure was too much for her magic protection.

  Vic raised her free, open hand against the incoming origin of the glacier.

  It took her two seconds more than usual as her mind was struggling to focus both on strengthening the Shadow Armour and that other spell.

  Damage started building up on her hp. All the noise she now faced was deafening. She couldn’t see anything but ice. She couldn’t feel anything but ice.

  “DEADLY LASER OF DEATH!” she screamed out.

  The shrieking of the ice intensified as a blinding, leaking burst of plasma shot out fifty centimetres away from her open shadow palm, fuming ice shattering like corn-seeds in a microwave. A splatter of the plasma grazed her shadow armour through the violent one-sided slaughter of the wailing ice and it gave in right there as that splatter continued its path and splattered away on the ground. Ice screamed all around her.

  The air sizzled. The searing heat was burning. The brutal changes of temperature made her retch, and she coughed, the laser having died out, and she was now on her knees, surrounded by the heavy burning hot crystallised mist that evaporated thickly in layers. Vic felt the searing fumes on her skin, the fragile ice she was kneeling on crunching wetly. The whole structure was so very fragile.

  A pop up warning her of a new "steaming” status effect added up.

  She felt light-headed. Huh. Well that was funny. It was the first time she was getting status effects for being too hot and too cold at the same time.

  She raised her shaking five something metres long magic sword. Oh. It was shaking because her hand and dark claws were shaking. That made sense.

  She breathed out. It was okay. The status effects would run out in a short time. She focused, and reformed around her arm another chunk of the Shadow Armour. Her dark, swirling purple claw quickly returned like an old friend.

  She stared at the surrounding slowly lowering mist. For a moment, she thought it’d be pretty cool-looking to slice through the air and disperse it. But on second thought, she’d better use it as cover. The wall of some house was just behind her, with no guards separating the distance between it and her. Lovely.

  She lowered the sword, and crouched, making a point not to miss the three metres tall upward jump to reach the first balcony of that building.

  The wet ice beneath her finger crunched and broke as he jumped up. Through the air, she heard some of the ice structure break and fall a few metres lower.

  She latched onto the balcony with one hand and very quickly climbed up, staring at the surrounding mist. This was weird. Why weren’t they pursuing in any way? That disturbing silence wasn’t swell.

  Her crouching form was silently grounded on the balcony’s handrail. She stared back down to the heavy mist, feeling a bit like a gremlin, and heard nothing but a weird eery creaking spreading through the unknown.

  Vic thought she saw roots of all things spreading away from an oval warping form of pale bark and shifting branches they were surrounding. Was she imagining things…?

  A sudden blast of air coursed in her surroundings, coming from behind the blurry shape of soldiers.

  The heavy mist quickly dispersed through that blast. No fair. She’d wanted to do that a moment before. This was clearly plagiarism.

  She squinted at the clear view she now got. Down below, branches were now spreading swiftly on the ground, in her direction. Soldiers surrounding… a bipedal form, coming out of a weird cocoon of creaking wood that swirled away as to present a royal entrance.

  Her eyes widened.

  “Oh shiiiiiiiii-”, Vic didn’t finish.

  Behind her, dozens of roots blew outwards, sending her flying back at the arena.

  Vic “…That was a bit much for a tiny, gangly teenager, wasn’t it?" Victorya be like:

  Vic: its not like i pissed off the emperor

  Vic: or casually displayed magical abilities beyond their comprehension

  Vic: must be my charming personality