Wood splinters flew through the air and sparks of lightning exploded around her. Tempest Blade broke with no weapon to support it.
The paladin’s blade sliced toward her through the maelstrom of shattered staff, nothing remaining to block its path.
She needed to move.
A piece of broken wood remained in her clenched fist. It was, maybe, two feet long? Across the hall lay the upper third, lightning burn marks scorched into the gnarled top.
The entire middle section was just gone. Reduced to splinters around her.
She should run.
It was just a stick.
She should run.
Pain cut through her thoughts as the paladin’s blade sliced into her arms, still up and raised from blocking with her staff.
She screamed as the blade exited her arm, leaving a long laceration through her left forearm and the thin metal plates that had protected it. Blood poured from the wound.
So much blood.
When had she last—
One of their shields slammed into her back. She staggered forward, off balance.
Another sword struck her back. Pain radiated up her spine as the force pushed her down.
She was falling.
Her staff was broken. Her arm was bleeding. She had next to no Stamina and only a quarter of her Focus left.
She was losing. She was surrounded.
What did she have left?
Tempest Blade? It blazed to life along the staff fragment, the lightning forming a sword’s blade in her hands. That was better than nothing, but only just. She could feel Staff Mastery trying and failing to connect with the weapon. She could swing it at her enemies—if she could stand up again—but there would be no skill in the movements.
Elemental Manipulation? What was left to manipulate? To what end?
Wind Step? Still deactivated by the captain’s skill. Was it permanent? It couldn’t be. Could it?
Confounding Mists? Expensive. But maybe it would buy the seconds she needed to catch her breath?
She’d barely decided to use the skill when the Mists burst from her body, exploding around the surrounding men.
She hit the floor as the mist filled the room.
You are safe, the aether whispered. It was a calming voice against her frantic nerves.
They can’t get you.
People were shouting around her—surprise and confusion and fear.
Stamina: 8/138
Focus: 76/549
Health: 83/133
Her blood pooled around her. Her body begged to lie where it was, to pass out into quiet oblivion.
But the paladins were still all around her. Three were close enough that they would step on her if they stepped forward. The other five weren’t much further away.
Mist or no mist, she couldn’t lie here.
She needed to sit up. Stand up. Fight.
Her body staunchly rejected that idea.
Stamina: 7/138
Her head swam. Every muscle felt like it was liquefying. She couldn’t move like this.
She fed her Hearth some of her Health, 30 for 15 Stamina and 45 Focus. She could have used more Stamina this time, but it wasn’t a ratio she had any control over.
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Stamina: 23/138
Focus: 121/549
Health: 74/133
She gasped as the Stamina shot through her body. Everything still hurt. A prevailing soreness laced every action, but she could move again. She just needed to ignore the hollow exhaustion that came with Health falling below 50%.
What next?
The blood. Her arm was bleeding. Bleeding fast enough that her Health was actively draining.
Health: 73/133
And quickly at that.
No wonder, either. The paladin’s blade had cut right through the metal of her arm armor and continued well into her flesh. Atmospheric Sense could feel the bone exposed. She might have seen it too if not for the thick mists and the welling, pouring, pooling blood.
Had the metal even done anything, or would his blade have gone through her bone, too, if it hadn’t been there?
Better question: could she stop the bleeding?
She fished around her Bag for bandages as she dimly acknowledged Atmospheric Sense reporting on the actions of the surrounding paladins.
Some had run, making it out of the mists and into the connected corridors. Some still hung far too close to her, their swords stabbing into the aetheric oblivion around them, questing for her. Some watched the emptiness, eyes wide and ears straining for the sensory input Confounding Mists had robbed from them.
She twisted the perception of space within the mists as she wrapped the bandage around her bleeding arm, Willing them to walk around her instead of through with an expenditure of Focus.
Stamina: 24/138
Focus: 110/549
Health: 72/133
Arm wrapped, the question again became, what next?
The paladins had not been idle while she’d patched herself up. Another had escaped the mists, leaving just five.
Their captain stood at the edge of her skill, angrily squinting into it. Could he see inside? Did he have a skill for that? Or was it just a stubborn determination to try, anyway?
He tapped his foot. Impatient for something? What?
Her skill to expire? Her to bleed out? Something else entirely? Nothing good for Cass, she was sure.
She had no new ideas on how to get out of the paladin’s looping area. Best case, it was like a video game puzzle, with a set solution she could eventually uncover. Middling case, it was like Confounding Mists, a space (or perception of space) the skill-user could reshape at will. Worst case, the loop was absolute as long as the user had it active.
A pattern she could eventually break. A skill manipulated by another she might trick or outmaneuver. But in the last case, she could only hope it would eventually turn off.
She would assume it was one of the first two options for now. How did she—
The commotion outside her mists caught her attention. A woman surrounded by two priests had joined the captain.
Priest of Fortitude (lvl 29)
Priest of Fortitude (lvl 25)
High Priestess of Fortitude
Lvl 35
[As spiritual leader of a temple cult, this woman has dedicated her life to the service of her chosen goddess and to the care and wellbeing of all who claim to share that devotion. She is blessed by her goddess with powers to better serve this role.]
“Honestly, Talus,” the priestess said to the captain. “I thought you martials would have handled a single ‘apprentice’ leveled girl by now. Even if it’s a demon.”
“We’re handling it,” the captain snapped back.
The priestess raised an eyebrow at the wall of mist before them. “Is that what you call this?”
“If the priest had done his job properly and hadn’t tipped it off, it wouldn’t have come to this.”
“Or perhaps you should have let mine handle this all the way through. It’s more likely it noticed your paladins, which gave the plot away.”
Arguments? Amongst her enemies? Cass listened closer. Maybe one of them would let slip the details of how the looping space worked. Or their discord could be something she could leverage against the other to let her out.
“As if it would have just walked into the confinement circle you prepared,” the captain sneered. “Don’t you have more circles to prep?”
“Did you want me to remove this or not?” The priestess gestured at the mist again.
A low, unwilling grumble of agreement ground out of the captain’s throat. “Dispellment is your area of expertise.”
Cass’s eyes widened at the word ‘dispellment’. Could this woman remove her Confounding Mists?
“And wanton violence is yours,” the priestess muttered as she drew a wand from her robes. She flicked it through the air, a circle of mana forming in its wake. The priests at her sides joined her. Together, they wove a spell.
Unknown Major Dispellment
[A wizard spell from a practice of magic not known to you. From the mana taken to weave it, few mana constructs or similar skills will survive.
Estimated time to completion: 5 seconds]
Would that include Confounding Mists? The priestess must think so, at least, if she was trying this.
Best to assume it would.
What did she do about it? She had no method to stop the spell itself. None except interrupting the casting?
Cass clenched what remained of her staff, her heart twisting at the sight of it.
It was just a stick, she repeated to herself. A stick she could still use to bludgeon someone with, she added, for the system’s benefit.
She moved out from between the paladins, still searching for her amid the fog and up to the edge of her skill.
Tempest Blade flared to life along her ‘bludgeon.’
[Estimated time to completion: 4 seconds]
She swung it, throwing the lightning from the mists.
They had no warning. The priestess was unarmored.
It should have hit her.
It could have killed her. Cass’s imagination could see the lightning burning cuts through the woman’s clothes and skin and organs. And with her death, Cass would have been safe for another minute. She would have bought another chance to find a way out. To find another way to escape.
“Fortitude’s Aegis,” the captain’s voice rang through the room instead.
Green flashed.
Lightning struck a barrier, exploding harmlessly into a fountain of blue sparks.
The priestess and her underlings were unharmed.
