"Fine." Gwen spat vehemently. "I'll hear you out, but first— answer my questions."

Faceless nodded with a mannerism Gwen was used to seeing in Debora's face. In contrast to her now alien appearance, the effect was extremely unsettling.

"Where's Debora? The real Debora, I mean."

Faceless pointed to her chest.

"If you mean her body, her morphic form, she's in here," she paused and looked Gwen in the eyes delicately. "If you mean the girl you had known. She is gone."

Gwen had anticipated as much. But even so, the confirmation caused a distressing contraction in her chest; made worse by the fact that she couldn't move her limbs or stretch her torso.

"When?"

"When do you suppose?" Faceless returned Gwen's inquiry with a question of her own.

Gwen searched through her memories of Debora.

"During the training?"

"Earlier."

"Before our time in the desert?" Gwen intoned bitterly. Those were happy memories. It was in the desert that Debora tried to kiss her. The very reminiscence that it could have been Faceless the whole while shook Gwen to her very core.

"Yes, before that."

Gwen instantly felt ill. She suppressed the acid reflux in her oesophagus, then took a moment to temper her riotous emotions.

So, it wasn't Debora who'd kissed her.
It wasn't Debora who'd invited her to bed.
It was this thing— this creature all along.

All memories of Debora exorcised from her mind, all the times they ate together, laughed and joked, jogged around the school. All those memories, now mutilated by Faceless' confession. Where she'd thought kindly of Debora's cheerful face, Gwen now felt repulsive revulsion and repugnance with every recollection.

Stun by the memories, she dug through the events of the yesteryear and found the precise, disastrous moment. In hindsight, it was so glaringly obvious; the incident stood out like a red, weeping sore.

"During the Field Trip, when you returned to us, in the bunker. You apologised, and I was surprised that you had a sudden change of heart."
Faceless smiled.

"Bingo."

Gwen had to take another breather to process Faceless' confession. Lowering her head, she watched her chest rise and fall, rise and fall, breathing in and out.

"What were you doing there? Were you already Debora when Edgar found us?"

"I was."

"You were pretending to be Dominated? He'd cast a spell on you."

"Edgar didn't know, but yes, I was pretending. I've seen it done many times before. It wasn't difficult to act the part."

"But he injured Debora! He drained her life!"

"He certainly didn't hold back. If he'd gone too far, I was going to tell him, but then that would have ruined my plans."

"Your plans?"

"Yes, one that far exceeds Edgar's mad dog antics," Faceless' expression was difficult to read. "Though I was Edgar's partner, my ultimate role, was to infiltrate Henry's inner circle, to uncover my father's habits, his schedules, his likes and dislikes, his moments of strength and weakness."

Faceless's face began to change again, becoming a middle-aged man with a greying beard. Her voice became deeper until it transformed into the baritone of a man.

"I was Alesia's Tower liaison first; I'd assumed control of this body and was using Alesia to try and penetrate Henry's faction. I'd leak her information from the other Factions, the deals that the Grey Faction was making, the experiments carried out by the Militant Faction."

"There was a problem, though. Alesia herself never thought of myself as a member she could trust or value, and thus the doors to the inner circle had always been closed to me. I suppose that even though she was so simple-minded, she instinctively knew not to trust a turncoat, especially one that professed their undying loyalty."

"Why Debbie?" Gwen demanded bitterly. "She had nothing to do with Master. She had nothing to do with any of this."

"It was a whim at first," Faceless replied with a tone that smacked of nostalgia. "I found her in the woods, wandering and clueless. She was an uncommonly comely girl, and I liked to collect spare forms. As a polymorphic shapeshifter, one never knew when a form would become useful."

"That's it?" Gwen's voice cracked a little. "She died on a whim?"

Faceless was relentless. "Yes. People have died for lesser reasons. What makes Debora special?"

"Then what? You came sauntering back into camp?"

"I did. You may be pleased to know that in Debora's final moments, her thoughts were of her family, and you."

"Me?"

"Yes, the old Debora possessed powerful feelings for you, even if they were ambivalent. Feelings that I inherited when I took her body."

"How does that even work?" Gwen questioned angrily. "That's not how Polymorph functions!"

"Yet for you and I, that's exactly how it works." Faceless raised a hand to pull at his or her face. A film of darkened void energy began to emerge, dissolving the face's physical form until he became a dark and indistinct silhouette. The dark mound of flesh that was Faceless' mien changed shape as the density of her body became fuller, taller, more toned and shapely— becoming one again, Debora.

Debora with her bright, amber eyes full of life.
Debora with her bronze, youthful limbs, sweaty after an uphill sprint. Debora, with her vivacious passion, with every emotion written on her face.

"Let's talk like this," Faceless continued in Debora's voice. "I am not… fond of my original body, I am uncomfortable, in my skin."

The fiend recounted their earlier topic and continued.

"My Polymorphy is a condition of the body, unique to my Void Magic. If you are willing, I'd be happy to teach it to you. Imagine it, Gwen, you could be anyone you want to be."

"So you're a body thief," Gwen accused the pseudo-Debora.

"Something like that. If you must know, I was far more interested initially in your body."

Gwen felt her skin crawl.

"Why the surprise? Think of it, Gwen, you were the perfect candidate. A dark horse with no background, no allies, no Faction and no House, a tabula rasa! You were perfect as an instrument for infiltration. You had prodigious talent, you had caught the eye of Alesia de Botton, and you had virtually no friends apart from that Healer and the Fire Mage."

Gwen chose not to meet Faceless' eyes as her cadence became more pronounced and excited.

"If I could have gotten some time alone with you in the confusion of Edgar's ploy, then…"

"That's enough…" Gwen muttered. "Why did you stop?"

"As I said, I had inherited many of Debora's strongest memories and emotions. The girl was obsessed, and through Debbie, I found something that I had not felt myself, not in all the years that I'd taken the faces of others. I found myself deeply interested, Gwen Song. Your vivacity, your lust for life, your intelligence and your whimsical speeches. Most of all, when I saw what you did to Edgar in that cave, I realised something."

"What was that?"

"We were meant to be."

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"You disgust me."

Faceless chuckled.

"Ha! How many Void casters do you think exist in this world? Mother was one; I, another. I had never seen others. Could you try to understand, even for a second, what it's like to know that you're different, a loner, a singular existence, forever alone - then suddenly, you find someone who is just like you?"

"We're not the same!" Gwen snapped.

"Oh, but we are." Faceless grinned sickly. "Did you not enjoy Caliban's powers? His meals giving you the ability to be Abjurer, Diviner, Evoker and Conjurer? Did you not feel that unmitigated hunger that could find no nourishment in nature? Do we not share a world where our secrets could never see the light, shareable only with one another."

"That's not true!" Gwen spat. "I never asked for this!"

The retort seemed to anger Faceless. The fiend's face grew distorted and loathful.

"You think I asked for this?!" Faceless howled at Gwen. Her face was a mask of pain and fury. "You think I wanted to be born like this!?"

Her form shifted again, this time reconstructing her entire body into the darkness of the Void, consuming the elemental garb Debora had been wearing. When her body once again materialised, she was stark naked. Gwen saw a figure mangled with scar tissues, its flesh pallid and grey.

Faceless' anorexic, malformed body compelled Gwen to shudder, for one limb was longer than the other, its stem gangly and bat-like. When her gaze fell upon Faceless' chest, there was a slight swelling that indicated aborted puberty; when her eyes fell lower, she saw nought but an indistinct mess of ambiguous flesh.

"Life does not take when surrounded by so much death— when prolonged to the Void." Faceless ran a finger down her chest, down to her belly button, where a small length of knotted flesh had welted over. "My mother certainly didn't think I'd survive, though thanks to her boundless curiosity for testing the limitations of her consumption ability, I'd acquired life through the unwilling sacrifices of others."

"Gwen," Faceless asked mercilessly. "Do you think I asked for this?"

Gwen's first instinct was to apologise and say that she was sorry, but the impulse caught in her throat. Faceless was the murderer of her friends and her Master! Gwen couldn't summon the empathy to feel an ounce of sorrow for the aberrant being.

Faceless resumed Debora's form, though now she was stark naked. The sight was such mockery, for it reminded Gwen of that precarious night in Surya's country estate.

"Now, are you ready to hear my offer?"

Gwen subtly strained against her bindings. They were still well secured, but as Faceless grew emotional with each new diatribe, she could feel them loosening and tightening. Should she listen? Gwen wondered. She didn't have a choice, did she?

"Tell me, how did you turn Walken? Why does he think that you're on his side?"

Faceless crossed Debora's arms across her chest.

"When you and I returned to school, I sought opportunities to get closer to you. Why do you think we kept meeting one another on our morning jogs? I knew that you would have taken that route."

Faceless' cadence resumed its hypnotic drone once she became absorbed in the telling of their history. She could see from Debora's face that the shapeshifter had truly enjoyed, even cherished, those memories. She spoke of her experiences as Debora as truly her own, not the stolen moments of a body snatcher.

"At any rate, I needed to get closer to you somehow. If I couldn't kill you, then I must somehow get closer to you using the identity of this girl. The original Debora was such a hapless, untalented Transmuter, a waste of her affinity. She was a brute, lacking the finesse required for high-tier Transmutation."

"At any rate, I supplemented her Transmutation abilities and managed to get Barlett to secure work experience under a particularly 'renowned' but seedy Transmuter."

"My grandfather," Gwen replied. If there was a single silver lining to the Mermen invasion, it was that the inland areas were entirely unaffected. Whatever happened to the coast, Surya and his apprentices would be safe to evacuate at their leisure.

"Indeed, I became a good student under Master Surya, though I must say, your grandfather was awful handsy."

Gwen did not find the humour in Faceless' jocular jab of her Opa.

"When we received news of the whole Mark Chandler ordeal, I volunteered, citing falsely to your grandfather what close chums we'd been at school. The old man was beyond pleased with our relationship, didn't even give a second thought to bringing me to comfort you."

"Then, to my surprise, and mortification - I met my target. I was finally in the same room as Henry Kilroy— my damned father."

Gwen recalled the day and felt such regret pressing down upon her conscience.

"To meet my father for the first time… I couldn't take my eyes off him. I stared at him, you know, dreaming of what could have been. He was so kind to you, Gwen, so full of love and support, all the things that I'd never received from Mother."

"So that's why I propose that we share another bond, Gwen. It is too late for me, but through you, I could vicariously live the life I always wanted. A life of being pampered and guided by a father who'd expected great things from me."

"You're sick," Gwen retorted, but her riposte was without venom. The recollection of Henry's kindness struck her with sorrows that cut to the bone.

"After we left Chandlers, I sent a Message with a lumen recording to Walken. Then after that, we had spent our wonderful summer together. When we kissed…"

"Shut up!" Gwen interjected. "Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!"

Faceless waited until Gwen could recollect herself.

"Mother had been feeding him information for some time now, snippets of information here and there, that would turn him against Henry. Even the exchange he had suffered from Alesia de Botton a few years ago was our doing."

"When I returned to the Tower next, I sought out Walken in person. In exchange for his promise to elevate my position, to sponsor me for a scholarship at the Arcanum of Sydney, he placed me in a Truth chamber, where he 'verified' certain parts of my memory. He was an Enchanter, you know, but his methods lacked finesse. When the man was satisfied, he sent me away, tasked with gathering more evidence, and that was when you'd invited us to go on your Outback adventure."

"To digress a little, you know what was funny?" Faceless asked.

"What?" Gwen tested the restraints again.

"Of all the times, it was when you were doing that sweat-drenched nude dance with those filth Indigenous folks that I was truly in danger. Since I was Edgar's partner during that incident, that damned snake knew who I was the instant it manifested in you. Remember that bolt of power you shot at the tent? I knew it was coming. I had to set up a decoy and blink into the river! Thank God the serpent was a primordial simpleton, else it could have told you the truth."

Almudj!

Gwen's mind blazed with renewed hope. The Rainbow Serpent! If what Faceless said was true, then surely Almudj would come to her rescue. If she could tap into the scale—

Gwen felt a sudden, sinking feeling. Where was the scale?

She had placed it on Henry to help him heal. With the Grot evaporated into thin air, so had her scale. Once more, cold despair wash over Gwen's shivering body.

"As for the rest, it was easy. I kept feeding Walken bits and piece of maligned information taken from my memory - either work I had done with Edgar or work I'd performed for mother. Together with Henry's steadfast support, Walken had been fully convinced that you were a family of Void Mages treating the Tower like your demesne, its people like cattle."

"The rest, you should be able to figure out yourself. Walken had messaged me, telling me to take you into custody. I'd done so, but it wasn't for his benefit."

"How did Elizabeth get into the Grot?"

"I shared Ferris' Glyph with Mother," Faceless shrugged, suggesting that much should be obvious. "I learned the key when Ferris gave it to Paul. It was a complex Glyph— but hardly an octogramic mandala. As for the Grot, so long as Sufina is dormant, it isn't capable of rejecting intruders, at least not ones who are friendly to the Grot's 'inhabitants'."

"So that's the long and short of it," Gwen said finally.

"Indeed."

Though they had conversed for some time, no one had appeared to accost them; no wandering soul had been shocked to find a stark-naked girl standing over another, bound wrist and ankle tied by a prison of sand. Gwen was hoping that at the very least, there would be Mermen present to distract Faceless.

"Are you ready to listen to my offer?" Faceless asked, her voice now edged with impatience. "There's only so much time before mother finishes the Mages up there."

"Go on."

"I want us to be partners."

"Impossible!" The very thought was aberrant.

"Shut up, listen, and don't interrupt me." Faceless tightened the sand around Gwen, cutting off her protest. "Gwen, you have a talent that few can boast of possessing. You may not truly know it, but only Void can truly defend against Void. With your abilities, you could one day stand up to even Mother, assuming you're given the time to grow."

"Furthermore, you even have the impossible boon of possessing Lightning, the very element that opposes, and indeed dispels, spells of the Void."

"This means that if you were to survive this ordeal, you could one day become someone who even mother will fear. In a duel of power, she wouldn't be able to penetrate your Abjuration Shields, but you can fracture her defences with Lightning. Do you understand what I am telling you?"

Gwen nodded despite herself. Once again, her position and circumstance had become uncertain.

"For that, I am willing to spare your life. I am offering myself to become your protector, your shield against mother's wrath until you can take her down, freeing the both of us."

Faceless' offer made sense, but Gwen felt all the unwillingness in the world assail her.

"I…" The words caught in her throat. She wanted to tell Faceless to go and fuck herself, that as Yue had promised, she was going to make Faceless feel pain and suffering in a way that the aberrant being couldn't even begin to imagine.

Yet, Gwen was no saint. She wanted to live. How much had Gwen endured since coming to this world? How could she just let it end here?
What if she said yes?

The very notion was sickening to her.
The faces of her friends and family flashed before her eyes.
Yue— whose animated china-doll face was forever mirthful and burning with passion.
Elvia— whose very presence was an angel that was a balm for her soul.
Alesia— whose fiery temper and desire for justice burned as hot as her scarlet flame.
Henry— whose kind eyes and old hands guided her every step in this alien world.

No.
She couldn't possibly agree.
Sometimes, death was preferable to cowardice.
Sometimes, the line had to be drawn, this far, and no further.

"I refuse—"

Just as Gwen sought to deliver her ultimatum, a ripple of nauseating energy expanded like a concentric ring from above. An explosion sundered the heavens, interrupting their moment of truth. The Tower, which had been invisible some half an hour ago, became suddenly visible, hanging languishingly above in the blue yonder. A bellowing dust cloud erupted from its tallest Tower, sending down cascading pieces of stone the size of skyscrapers.

Something began to materialise atop the fallen spire.
A dark sun.
A black hole was sucking in all light, with thick tendrils of void-matter that lashed out as though they were alive.

Faceless turned to Gwen, her face no longer patient and willing.

"Make the decision now," she snarled at her. "What'll it be, Gwen Song?"

Gwen met her enemy vis-a-vis, her ochre-hazel eyes glowing with concentric rings of electric blue.

"Fuck your offer," she spat. "Do your worst."

To Gwen's surprise, Debora's face lost all emotion.

"Fine, have it your way."

Debora's likeness melted away as Faceless once again turned black and ambiguous, taking on the property of the indistinct Void. The creature lowered its face toward Gwen's, as if ready to deliver a full-mouthed kiss. It's sour breath washed over Gwen's face as its maw opened to reveal yellowing teeth.

"Maybe it's better this way," Faceless intoned emotionlessly. "We'll be together, whether you like it or not."


Gwen had yet to be on the receiving end of a Void consumption.

She had tried to imagine herself in the place of its victims after Caliban had its day. As horrid as the creature's methods were, the process was at least expeditious. A quick look into the abyss of its maw and its victims were out of sight, out of mind.

She had thought the same for her present fate, imagining that Faceless's polymorphic spell would swallow her with a slurp. There would be a quick moment of limbo, much like an ethereal jaunt through the Void, then nothing.

Unfortunately, Faceless' magic was the slow and meticulous kind.
Looming over her bound body; the unintelligible, dark silhouette began by tearing away a section of her blouse, exposing her white, porcelain abdomen. The blood drained from Gwen's face, making stark her already pale complexion.

A dark and viscous liquid began to weep from Faceless' gnarly hands, reducing them to stumps. It dripped onto Gwen's stomach with the likeness and texture of soft wax.

Gwen watched with trembling horror as obsidian ooze kissed her abdomen. She recoiled; her jaw clenching with such revulsion that it jarred her teeth.

When she caught her breath, Gwen attained the petrifying epiphany that this was how Faceless had planned to assimilate her. There wasn't pain. Instead, what she felt was akin to a strange form of anaesthesia.

"Arrgh… Aah…" Gwen moaned despite herself. The alien agitation of losing her perception of touch was far more terrifying than the nerve pinching pain she had anticipated.

Against her most ardent wishes, she began to whimper.

Gwen had not wanted to give Faceless the pleasure, but how could she in the circumstance? It wasn't as though she was an agent trained to resist torture and interrogation. It was only when the adrenaline of the moment began to wane; that Gwen recalled she had been merely an NoM in her old world and a mere student in this world, an untested girl living under the protective shadow of her betters.

When Faceless ignored her pleading, she began to thrash incoherently, attempting to throw off the oily substance attaching itself to her abdomen, to grab a fistful of the gravel and rub it into the numbing wound that was even now expanding.

"Hold still," Faceless commanded. "I don't want to damage my new body any more than I have to."

Within moments, Faceless' morphic liquid had reached her diaphragm.
Gwen felt her heaving chest deflate, the musculature unwilling relaxing as parts of its nervous structure lost their connection to her body.

No longer capable of speech, Gwen's mind made the worst of its circumstance.

What would happen when the oily film reached her breast, penetrated her heart? Would she quietly fall into cardiac arrest? Could she be thankfully deceased before Faceless moved onto her brain, devoured her face?

Gwen thought of the others she had inadvertently consumed.

One woman had screamed and screamed until Caliban dug through her chest and mercifully put an end to her suffering. Another man watched, laughing maniacally as the netherworld worm began with his feet.
Now here she was, enduring the same fate.

Was it karma?

What was it as Doyle had written for Holmes? That violence recoils upon the violent— and the schemer falls into the pit to which he digs for others?

Gwen's still functional fingers clawed the ground, searching for something, anything, her nails splintered as they raked the loose gravel, leaving bloody trails across the sand-tossed gravel.

There must be something she could do! She couldn't give up now!
She had to resist and fight!
She would antagonise Faceless until the dark slick consumed the last mote of light in her eyes.

She willed herself to open her Gate of Elemental Lightning, to form a Sigil, any Sigil, so that she could flood her body with the antithetical force, to flush the Void-matter invading her physical form. She willed her Void energy to manifest, to take its liberty with her life-force. She was willing to pay any cost if it meant freeing herself from the confines of the silica manacles cutting her wrists bloody and raw.

But no silvery mana of Conjuration emanated from her body; no crackle of Transmutation; no thunderous applause of Evocation.
Though the mind was willing, her flesh was arrested and broken.
The oily film had now moved its way between her breasts, edging its way towards her neck. Already the vaguely humanoid form of Faceless was diminished, smaller; its volume and mass spent to consume Gwen's flesh and bones.

Gwen's Blackwattle blouse fell away, her inner shirt and undergarments consumed by the void matter; she became exposed, her white flesh quivering against the briny air blowing from the open bay. All that remained upon her chest was the nondescript figure of a jade Kirin, tied around her neck with an ordinary red string.

The viscous black liquid hesitated as it met the jadeite, a natural material which was said to repel evil spirits. Now exposed to the light of day, the Kirin's emerald surface became a translucent green, highlighting a composite membrane the likeness of a Haworthia's windowed flesh.

Feeling Faceless' hesitation, Gwen violently pushed herself upward, kicking out her legs, flagellating the skin from her wrists and ankles. A sharp, throbbing pain emanated from her lower limbs, indicating that in her wild exertion, she had distended something from its socket.

She felt Faceless's impatient frustration as she made her last-ditch struggle. With another nauseating wave of numbness consuming her thighs, her legs became still. The pain from her injured limb faded as Faceless ploughed on with passionate intensity, consuming the nerves of her lower body, while above her waist, it began to reach for her throat.
Gwen felt the paralysis flow over her chest. Her neck fell limp, and her head rested helplessly against the gravel.

This was it. Gwen told herself. In the end, no one came to save her.
Did she have a good run? Was she satisfied with the life she had?

No.

Gwen was not satisfied.

She wanted life.
She wanted to hug Elvia and rub her face into her flaxen blonde hair.
She wanted to go on more adventures with Yue, hear her undisguised laughter.
She wanted to marvel at Alesia's antics, sharing a Muscato while overlooking the harbour.
She wanted to see if Gunther would ever relent and give in to Alesia.
She wanted to become the kind of Mage that she'd promised Henry, the militant pacifist, the Justiciar who lived by her own rules.
Gwen no longer believed that death was a way out, that it could be preferable to suffering. If she were to die, it would be by her terms, performing a due that she owned and possessed.
Not like this.
Not a worthless demise like this.
She wanted to live.

"I want to live!"

Her desperate voice reverberated through the air like a clarion.

The twice-lived sorceress blinked, her long lashes fluttering to reveal multi-hued irises alive with vitality.

A warmth was flowing from her chest, quietly smouldering as it flooded her conduits.

She could hear her heartbeat, a staccato iambic rhythm, growing louder and louder. An emerald presence was suffusing her chest, becoming more powerful by the second.

Her eyes regained their clarity and focus. She looked down towards her bare bosoms, finding her torso no longer possessed by the black, viscous tar that was Faceless' consumption spell.

Faceless stared at the glowing jade pendant lying upon her chest; her cataract eyes were wide with dumbfounded confusion.

Gwen felt a tingle as the emerald glow enveloped her. Where her skin had been consumed and eroded, it now began a rapid regeneration that pushed back the dark, oily tide.

"Almudj?"

She smelled the eucalyptus-scented air, felt the flush of the golden noon, she sensed the cold waters of billabongs and the welcoming heat of burning red clay.

Faceless' consumptive polymorphic shell slid from Gwen's restored body as though she was a serpent shedding old skin. Like ferrofluids without the guidance of a magnetic field, the fiend's magic was failing spectacularly.

There was a sudden sound of thunder, rolling across a cloudless sky besotted by an evil sun.

"Usurper!" A thought, fulminated beside Gwen's head, low as a deep quake.

"Yes, usurpers." Gwen heard herself reply. "Always so cheeky."

Faceless frantically retreated from her, trying to recollect the lost motes of his morphic form. The scattered fluid was crawling towards their host like a swarm of armyworms seeking shelter in numbers.

The motes of sand that had bound Gwen to the ground suddenly quivered with fear, helpless against an existence so ancient and primordial.

Gwen raised a pale white arm from the ground, flawless and unmarred by injury. Gone were the bloody abrasions that flayed her wrists. Gone were the cuts and scraps that ran the length of her elbows, sticky with sand and gravel. She pointed a delicate finger, its pink nail no longer torn at the base, toward Faceless.

"Sand Shield!"

Faceless relented all efforts to consolidate its scattered parts. Instead, the half-formed creature crossed both arms and summoned a half-dome that sheltered its remaining body. It couldn't use a Void shield against her lightning— even Gwen could see that.

"Barbanginy!" Gwen called out to the heavens. A roar of cascading thunder answered her call, shattering a stained glass window nearby, sending loose rubble cascading from ruined buildings.

A blade of green lightning shot from the heavens, ionised from thin air. It struck Faceless unerringly, utterly decimating its Shield of Sand, cracking it with the likeness of a hammer falling upon a fragile egg. The force was such that a shockwave rippled from the epicentre, forcing the shapeshifter into the sunken ground. A concentric ring of dust billowed from where Gwen and Faceless stood, blasting apart the gravel and liquifying the silica below. The Sand Spirit, who had attempted to shield Faceless, flared a brilliant white before being blown apart by the force of the explosion, diffusing into a spray of white-hot glass.

Gwen willed herself to stand.

Before her body even moved; a cushion of air levitated her from the ground, uprighting her body and settling her gingerly onto the rapidly cooling floor.

She walked the few steps it took to approach a burnt-out crater; within which Faceless squirmed.

When the smoke cleared, Gwen saw the pale, mangled, aberrant form of Henry's child, her Void magic utterly decimated by the blast of primordial lightning. Its already twisted body was now a mess of broken bones and hanging ligaments, languishing in a pool of sizzling silica.

The creature coughed. Gwen was surprised to see that its blood was as red as hers.

"Forgot. About that. Pendant." Faceless struggled to annunciate each word. Gwen could see several of its ribs poking from its torso. "So stupid… Yue even spoke— about it."

"Don't you dare speak her name," Gwen warned the horrid thing.
It was a strange sight; their roles now reversed. A near-naked Gwen was now staring down at the paralysed form of the disabled Faceless.

"I wonder. Back then, if I had taken Elvia back then— would you—"

"Don't you dare speak any of their names!"

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Gwen shot a spark of lightning which burned blue and green as it singed Faceless' chest, sending the already wounded creature into a convulsive death rattle.

She placed a hand on her amulet and felt the familiar energy of the Mythic pour from its interior. The Kirin pendant had been a gift from her father, a prize he had unwilling gifted. When she'd first met Henry, her Master had told her that it was the soul stone of a Kirin, though little else. Likewise, she had felt its effects many times in the past. It had taken in the dissipating energy of dying creatures whose soul-stone sundered upon death— but not once had the pendant saw fit to dispensed its bounty to Gwen. After all the crisis she had faced; she had forgotten about it entirely.

"I don't. Suppose. You'll spare. Me?" Faceless had taken on a strange cadence of speech. Gwen noted that it was because of its deformed jaws. Without its polymorphic spell active, even speaking seemed to be causing Faceless pain. "My. Offer still. Stands."

"Death is too good for you," Gwen said coldly, feeling a poetic epiphany manifesting within her mind.

The damned thing was responsible for the death of her Master, her friends, her family in this world. By that same measure, it had tried to consume her body! If it had succeeded, it would have mascaraed through the world in her form, wearing her skin like a sock puppet!

Gwen felt a sudden clarity compel her.

She wanted to murder Faceless. She wanted the damned thing to suffer.
The intensity of the desire frightened her. Were such thoughts untenable? Would Henry, who'd thought the world of her, be disappointed if his apprentice celebrated her cruelty?

Her old self would have shirked from her duty. Hid behind wise words of great men whose wisdom where ivory towers.

But not so now.

She thought of Henry, her Master, and the first time she'd impressed her kind mentor.

"The abuse of Greatness…" she had announced to him naively, thinking herself armoured in the sagacity of her old world. "… is when remorse is disjointed from power!"

But she felt no remorse now.
It felt right.
If anything was right in the world, it was this.

"Caliban!" she commanded, her banished creature appropriating its pound of flesh. To Gwen's pleasant surprise, the cost in vitality barely registered against the reservoir held within the Kirin pendant.

Caliban slithered into being, bloated and muscular, a sinuous blight upon the world.

"Shaa! Shaa!" Caliban menaced the hapless Faceless. Its smooth carapace slid open with a silent hiss, sending globulars of grey goo sliding down its pulsating purple body. It's lampreys mouth opened to reveal its pink tentacled tongues, writhing within a mouth full of dagger-like teeth.

"Oh." Faceless chuckled, a mouthful of clotting blood issuing from its torn lips. "I told you we were alike! I told you. Gwen Song. We would be together. One way. Or another."

"Make it slow," Gwen commanded Caliban, her iron voice without an ounce of remorse.

Caliban slunk forward and began with Faceless' limbs. From there, it would proceed to the liver, the offal, the heart, and finally, the sweetmeat that was its brain. While Faceless wailed, Gwen listened to the joyous music of her Familiar's wicked work.

Her gaze upward.

A dark sun still floated over the horizon.

From beneath it, Gwen could just see minute specks locked in aerial combat. There were flashes of radiance that indicated her brother-in-craft was locked in deadly battle.

She extended a hand and relented a portion of the protective, emerald energy. It was subtle, but her familiarity with the Void allowed her to feel it distinctly. The blighted light of the Black Sun was draining her life. It was barely perceptible, but it was there.

"Jesus Christ..." She shuddered to think that if the spell covered all of Sydney's metropolis, the number of souls feeding into it would range anywhere from two to three million. If a Mage such as her felt diminished by the life-drain, how long could an NoM last against the pseudo sun's insatiable celestial hunger?

Beside her, Caliban had almost finished its wicked work. The creature had done well, for Faceless had only expired in the second minute of its inexpert endeavour. When the serpent had finished the last vestige of its meal with a grotesque slurp; she recalled it.

Gwen felt no immediate changes to her Astral Body, but she knew that her new boon would come. Concurrently, she would take Faceless' gift of Affinity and talent as interest.

She produced from her Storage Ring a simple one-piece dress and attired herself, all the while staring intently at the dark sun.

"Almudj," she closed her eyes and imagined the scintillating form of the serpent. "Will you help me?"

A violent gust of air swept her from the ground. Gwen herself lacked the means for Flight, but the elemental air nonetheless held her aloft.

Gwen took a deep breath and smothered the rampant emotions running through her disquieted mind.

Faceless was dead. She had her satisfaction now.
But she was far from done.
It was time for Elizabeth Sobel to pay back her debt of blood.

When Morye Song finally arrived at Rose Bay, it felt as though he had survived what felt like the twelve trials of Hercules.

He had begun the search for his daughter immediately, scouring the abandoned Cathedral but finding nothing but the flotsam and jetsam of a hurried evacuation. He'd sought for her high and low through the school grounds, even venturing into the surrounding suburbs, but still, she was nowhere to be found.

Morye cursed Gunther Shultz.

"The lying sack of shit!" he shouted at no one in particular. "Wasting my time! I could have evacuated to the inland shelters already!"

As if answering Morye's unbidden curse, there was a cacophony bang.
The Tower had materialised above.

"Oh, thank fuck!" Morye muttered to himself, taking a relieving drag from a cigarette he'd cooly lipped the whole while. "Finally, someone's doing their job."

As if mocking Morye's relief, the spire of the Tower erupted, sending shockwaves across the sky. All around them, bits of masonry began to crumble into the city below.

"Ah, fuck!" Morye cursed, the cig he'd been nursing fell from his lips.

He watched the Tower smoke and burned. Thankfully, the fortress remained afloat.

Another explosion rocked its spire.

A dark sun blossomed and began to shed a prismatic spray of void matter the blighted the landscape. Instantly, the trees started to wilt, dropping leaves at an insane rate. Smaller flora such as perennial wildflowers withered immediately.

Morye quickly protected himself with a sheen of salt, preventing his life force from escaping his body.

"Jesus, what is this, the Sino War? What's with the strategic-class rituals?"
Given the circumstances, he asked himself whether he'd done his best to search for his missing child.

"A father can only do so much," he announced to no one in particular, confident that he had executed his duty to the fullest capacity. He was in a real-life crisis, after all, not a Lumen-cast propaganda recording. "Such is life."

Morye incanted a flight spell and again took to the air. He was about ready to launch from the peninsula when a burst of brilliant lightning which suddenly emanated from the cloudless sky.

He flew in circles until he found the source of the lightning.
It was Gwen.
His daughter was stark naked and bare-breasted, a living Venus.
Morye quickly averted his eyes; feeling the awkwardness rise like an acute case of indigestion.

"What the fuck?" he swore again. He couldn't even begin to fathom why his daughter would be trapezing around a battlefield in the nude. He was just about to announce his awkward presence when a black serpent, more horrible than anything he'd seen since the war, materialised beside her.

"OH, FUCK!" he ducked behind cover. "Seriously Gwen, who the fuck are you hanging around with?"

Then the thing began to eat. From Morye's vantage point, he could see that the netherworld worm was torturously consuming the paralysed Mage languishing in the burnt-out crater.

"Jesus! Shit!" Morye mouthed unconsciously, feeling ill at the sight of the live dismemberment. When the creature began to swallow and regurgitate the Mage for ease of eating; he hurled in his mouth. "Who does that! Seriously!"

Morye had to wash out his mouth before he felt ready to accost his wayward daughter about her inhuman cruelty. What had happened to his simpering, quiet, beautiful little girl in the last twelve months?

When had she become such a delinquent? The last time he saw her, she'd been entirely innocent and naive. What the hell had Henry Kilroy been teaching his daughter! He would have words! Polite, but stern words, with the Magister! The old dog would get a piece of his mind!

Just as Morye was about to leap from cover to wag a critical finger at her face, his wayward daughter began to glow with a radiant, emerald energy. As Morye watched agog, his daughter launched herself into the air, unaided by any spell, and made for the dark sun.

It took Morye several more minutes to process the scene he'd just witnessed. In the aftermath, the Salt Mage tapped his pockets and found another cigarette. He lit it and smoked, inhaling and exhaling contemplatively.

"I am not even supposed to be working today," Morye comforted himself.
Sometimes, he realised, a man should just be honest with himself.
"Fuck this. I am out."

Alesia de Botton was rapidly blinking through the Grot when she became suddenly displaced by the instability of the pocket dimension. The distortion had caught her unaware, sending her barreling into a space caught between two places. To her understanding, the Grot was not a single space; it was an overlap. It existed in the Tower as the heart of Henry's domain - as well as a Dryad's grove, located in one of the world's infamous Black Zones.

In his youth, her Master had sojourned to one such zone as a part of his quest. It was there that Henry had met a fledgeling Dryad, gifted her the name of Sufina, and contracted her to be his partner.

And as for Sufina, Alesia had known the ageless Dryad since her troubled youth as a rebellious rabble-rouser. She had fond memories of sitting within the Grot, her thin legs dangling from a branch as she nursed a cup of golden mead. Whenever Alesia was hurt, the sympathetic Dryad would cradle her like a mother, its energetic presence mending her wounds both physical and otherwise.

Earlier, when she had finally orientated herself, the dimensional tethers were already quaking with instability. She looked for Henry, for Yue, for Gwen's friends. What she saw, however, was a distorted jumble of uncertain, malformed vision. The space of the Grot within the Tower was collapsing.

The implication fell upon Alesia like a Cone of Cold manifesting through her gut. Her chest felt as though a Telekinetic hand was attempting to extract her heart, arteries and all.

"Master…" she uttered despairingly, feeling herself ambushed by powerful, unbidden emotions.

In no Plane, neither Astral, Elemental or Primary, had Alesia imagined that her deathless mentor could have met his end before she did. After all, she was the reckless one, the haphazard adventurer, the fiery madcap who'd seldom valued thought over action.

But tragedy seldom had the patience for sentimentality.
Unbidden, the air distorted.

"Blink!" It was all Alesia could do in the circumstances. The Blink spell, when channelled elementally, took one into a pocket dimension of its own, diving into the Elemental Plane of Fire before emerging once again been displaced into the Prime Material Plane.

When Alesia emerged again into the material realm, she was no longer in the Tower.

She was falling fast, tumbling from the sky while the distant curvature of the earth appeared and disappeared from the edge of her vision. The forward momentum of her blink must have been converted into a downward thrust, for Alesia could hear the air whooshing fatalistically past her face.

"Flight!"

Desperately she tried to levitate herself, somersaulting and corkscrewing wildly. The earth beneath her quickly approached. Before Alesia could terminate her momentum, she crashed into the line of trees.

The first few impacts were gentle enough, sapling branches snapping under her weight. The next dozen raked her skin and beat her senseless, tossing her bodily to and fro as she ricocheted toward a carpet of pine needles.

She landed with an audible thunk, thankfully padded by the soft soil.
Her clothes were a shredded mess, her skin broken and bleeding. Her shoulders and thighs had become marred by brutal gashes, a stabbing pain within her torso that suggests a rib had found itself out of place.

For a moment, Alesia laid still, stunned in more ways than one.

She was alone - alone in a quiet forest with no one to judge her, no one to look up to her stoic demeanour. There, prone and bleeding, she thought of her Master, a man she would have gladly called a father. She recalled the lines of his kind face as he guided her, his stern reprimand as he showed her the ways of the world. He had taught her how to fight, how to use her spells, how to exploit her enemies. He'd shielded her when things had gotten out of control, laughed with her when she'd been successful.
Now all of that was ended.

Now, she would never again hear that voice, never again feel the firmness of his hand upon her shoulder.

Alesia de Botton, the Scarlet Sorceress, began to weep.

First as a quiet sob, then growing as a wracking cry that shook her shoulders and tugged at her broken ribs. She began to bawl like a child, feeling the rawness of her emotions overwhelm all rational thought.

The outburst persisted until the pressure that had built up within her chest escaped. When the last ounce of grief burned itself out, the crisis of the moment came crashing back.

Her teacher was gone, but his murderer still lived. Gwen needed saving, and Gunther was still fighting for his life somewhere.

Her body felt broken, her potion cool-downs spent, but Alesia de Botton had one more trump card up her sleeve.

She materialised the Efreeti Dagger in her hand.

It was a gift from her Master, used to tap into her gifted Affinity.
Within it was imprisoned the spirit of an Efreet that Henry had summoned, trapped, and bound for her perusal. It was a unique item, exceedingly rare and precious, an irreplaceable treasure.

She held the blade gingerly and sliced it across the palm of her hand, smearing the glinting ochre metal with a dash of striking crimson.

"O Heart of Flame, Spirit of the Fire, I summon thee from the City of Brass, heed my call."

The blade became wreathed in a white-hot flame. The fire expanded until it took on the shape of a woman, scarcely garbed in an intricately beaten brass-brassiere. Its hair was a mane of orange and ochre, its eyes two burning coals. Its limbs were full and vital, round and shapely, its waist sinuous and serpentine, at once dangerous and inviting.

The casual observer would have recognised its likeness as Alesia's infamous flame-clad form, her signature combat transformation.
When no order for element fusion came from Alesia, the Efreet gazed toward its Master with puzzlement and malice. Djinns such as these were proud and arrogant creatures. To be made to serve a mere mortal was a severe insult, the gravest injury imaginable to its magical mind.

"I want to make a deal," Alesia declared.

Immediately their surrounding smouldered and burned.
She had the Djinn's full attention.

"Give me the power necessary to defeat my enemies, to avenge my Master," Alesia intoned carefully. "And I shall set you free."

There was no hesitation in the Djinn's choice. For two decades it'd been trapped in the Efreeti Blade. Though twenty years were but a moment for these immortal beings, the imprisonment remained a degeneration of its noble status that it loathed bearing.

Crack!

The blade of the elementally-forged dagger splintered.
A mote of flame leapt from within, falling upon Alesia's bosom.
Her body caught the spark as though it consisted of bone-dry kindling, transforming her into a torrent of swirling fire that twisted and turned until she became the centre of a flaming vortex. A scarlet tornado burst from the depth of the pine forest with a terrific cacophony, transforming the plantation into a sea of flames.

Her wounds no longer mattered, her injuries became less than substantial. Wreathed in the fleeting power of a Djinn, Alesia was now a white-hot font of plasma, a living pyre in humanoid form.

She rose into the sky and saw the distant skyline of Sydney.

The sky was no longer the same ultramarine she had seen in Rosebay. Now it was tainted by a black sun that seemed to suck in all light, casting a miasmic shadow of Void matter over the landscape.

With a simple gesture and a command from her will, Alesia became a shooting star, tearing across the afternoon sky.
There, she would find Elizabeth.
There, she would find vengeance.
There, she would find atonement.


"Irene, one more time!" Gunther barked at the Master Diviner. Ferris focused her mana and conjured another Simulacrum, the strain causing her already pale face to wince with mana fatigue.

The illusory Gunther flew directly beneath Sobel, creating refractory conjurations which allowed Gunther to strike at the Void Mage utilising a pincer attack.

Beside them, Walken was already panting with exhaustion, having spent the better portion of his mana on the failed Maze. Of the three, only Gunther was barely breaking a sweat, carefully managing his mana pool despite the dozen or so exchanges they had traded in succession.

Their core problem, the combatants gathered, was that neither Ferris nor Walken were Combat Mages who had gained the title of Magister through decades of conflict and war.

Irene Ferris was ultimately just an academic; an intelligence officer turned Magister who was more interested in Arcane Manufacturing than pragmatic combat. Walken, on the other hand, was better; but the man had always worked in the shadows, seldom gracing the Tower's oft-violent conflicts of interest.

A scholar.
A politician.
A Paladin.
That's the rag-tag team that fate had wrought to combat a six-decade-old Void Sorceress, a war hero who'd survived the Saurian Incursion, the Coral Sea Conflict, and countless other military actions large and small.

At first, the battle had opened optimistically. They had fought her in the Tower and beaten back the tide of vampiric lamprey creatures. When they had thought Elizabeth cornered, however, she invoked a ritualistic incantation which began as a dark orb, then rapidly expanded until it became the scene before them. At first, they had thought the spell a Maelstrom or at worst a Black Hole, but the reality of their new hell quickly outstripped even the worst of their expectations.

Battling under the baleful light of the Void Sun was itself a fatiguing endeavour. Even if the trio could use shields to prevent the vitality drain, they still felt their ambient mana draining away, making combat excessively lethargic.

Gunther was not optimistic about their chances. If he was to be brutally honest with himself - Elizabeth Sobel was kicking their arses. For some reason, the woman had a seemingly inexhaustible array of vitality and mana.

Where Gunther, Ferris and Walken planned and conserved mana, his Master's estranged wife continued to pump out high-tier cataclysms one after another.

From training with Gwen, Gunther knew that the fledgeling Void Mage was at best good for a handful of low-tier spells and at best one or two higher-tier incantations. Yet Elizabeth seemed completed unaffected by the physical strain of Void Magic.

The Dark Sun was the apparent culprit for Elizabeth's inexhaustible stamina. Earlier, Gunther had fired a Sunbeam into the Void portal without so much as receiving a single indication that his attack affected the orb. It had, as the saying goes, it had disappeared into the Void.

All they could do was to kite Elizabeth and wait to see if she would expose a moment of weakness for them to exploit.

To that end, Gunther was glad that Irene Ferris was on their side.
The Magister wasn't a Combat Mage, but she was an adept Illusionist. With a plethora of Mirrored Images, Arcane Vision, Projected Image and Simulacrum. Together, they harried Elizabeth, while being spared from the brunt of her attacks.

The Void sorceress was growing impatient though; her spells were increasingly more outlandish and less restrained. Already the collateral damage from misfired spells and dodged attacks had taken down a portion of the Tower's outer walls, sending a hail of deadly stones into the city below.

The rest of the Tower Mages had dispersed, finding shelter or escaping while they still could. If Gunther and two other Magisters could not hold down Elizabeth, then the city was forfeit; they would merely be fodder for the insatiable hunger of Sobel's vampiric ritual.

"Chain Void Bolt!" A zig-zag array of dark Lightning sliced across the sky, striking one mirrored image after another.

The third ricochet caught Gunther's clone, sundering the mirage into the indistinct, azure motes of mana unique to the School of Illusion. Despite their best efforts, the tier 6 Evocation had caught them flat-footed; its deadly effects deployed within a split-second.

"Light Screen!"

Gunther's shield appeared too late to assist Walken, who'd been caught alone after his illusory double had perished.

"Void Sphere!"

A ball of void energy bloomed beside the Magister, eating through his protection in the blink of an eye. Of all the primary elements— Air had the weakest Shield by far.

Usually, Walken would have fought behind his conjured familiar, the impressive Couatl Aella— a winged serpent that was equally the match of many a Magus. Unfortunately for the hapless Magister, his familiar, with its rare lightning breath attack, had been an early casualty of their battle against Sobel. Winded, Walken fought off the hostile magic, but it was clear that the scheming Magister had been grievously wounded.

Gunther retracted the Light Screen. His Abjuration wasn't going to help the Magister now.

"Ferris!"
"On it!" A simulacrum split off from Ferris and dived for the falling Magister. Like Waken, she too was approaching her limit.

"Fiore, when's the damn Towers getting here?" Gunther fired off a Message spell to Walken's Second, who'd chosen to remain in the Tower and oversee communications.

"The mana drain from the Void-Sun is wreaking havoc with our instruments, but I'd say in the next hour," a wearied female voice replied.

"Carey, what's the status on the Evacuation?"

"Not looking good sir, due to our loss of LRM earlier, most of the NoM civilians remain above ground."

"Shit! What are the Enforcers doing? What about the Civil Defence Mages?"

"I am afraid they have their hands full."

"With what? There's no incursion past the CBD area!"

"With the riots, sir."

"The what?"

Gunther executed a corkscrew turn, avoiding a hail of dark ice that shrieked past his mirrored image and into the city below.

"The NoMs, sir. They're rioting and looting across the Greater West."

Gunther cursed under his breath. Now was not the time to be delicate. As much as his Master seemed to sympathise with the NoMs, their behaviour often left him wondering if they were even the same species. Rioting in the crisis of an invasion, looting for profit when an enervating sun was growing ever larger above their heads? What foolishness!

"Kill the ringleaders and set an example, get the rest into the Shelters as soon as possible. If the Dark Sun spreads beyond the city, they're all going to be Void dust. I'll take full responsibility."

"Aye, Sir. I'll pass the message on."

With a boost of mana, Gunther executed a deadman's turn, watching Elizabeth blow past him in a white blur.

The Void Sorceress must be supremely confident, Gunther observed. She lacked Ioun Stones, wands, enchanted armour, and expendable items— all Sobel had on was a white chiffon dress whose tattered state indicated mortal fabric. Indeed, while the trio had burned potions and scrolls, the Void sorceress had carried on without appearing taxed. After dodging another spell, Gunther had the distinct feeling that Elizabeth was a cat toying with three blind mice.

"Dawn!"

A ball of light erupted in front of Elizabeth's flight path. The Void Mage immediately erected a shield, but this time it was Gunther who'd caught her flat-footed. He watched with focused intent as the radiant heat seared her milk-white skin, eliciting blistering boils from her flawless complexion.

The scent of charred flesh trailed through the air.

Just as Gunther slowed to make ready his follow-up strike; Elizabeth rotated her body in midair and fired off a riposte to his aerial ambush.
Her conjured Morden's Blade shrieked through the air, too fast for Gunther's eyes to follow. By the time he had erected his Non-Newtonian shield, it was already inches away from his torso.

"Teleport!"

Even with Gunther's proficiency, he was too late.
The blade found his body just as the spell manifested.
When Gunther reappeared some distance away, he could feel that a part of his musculature was amiss. A good six-inch of his flesh— skin, tissues and all, had been consumed.

Before his body could register the pain, Gunther materialised a healing injector and impaled his wound. The itching growth of new flesh immediately followed, but the Void had already taken its toll.

His Astral body had become wounded— even if Gunther's body healed, it would take months of soulful osmosis for his flesh to regain sensation and feeling.

So it was that the Paladin of Sydney fell back, cursing himself for underestimating the Void Mage's resilience. His one solace, however, was that they had exchanged a significant blow.

Until Elizabeth reappeared from her tumbling roll, her ivory face not showing a single blemish.

Gunther cursed, caught off guard by the impossible outcome. He had seen her face boil and burn! How was this possible?

The Paladin's moment of hesitation proved near-fatal.

Just as Gunther reeled from both the physical shock of recovery and the mental stupor of surprise, Elizabeth made her play.

The Morden's Blade remerged from behind her and teasingly, then made a bee-line for Gunther's chest.

Gunther did not doubt that the blade was a distraction and that the woman would have a follow up waiting for him. But, his retaliation needed a few more seconds, for the reinvigoration of lost flesh had paralysed his body.

Gunther had thought that his final thoughts would be of his Master.
To his surprise, it was Alesia's face that appeared.

A flaming, resplendent Alesia who was pure plasma, the very vision of an elemental Djinn blessed with the power of fire. A split-second passed, then his vision filled with that of a fiery Valkyrie blazing a trail of fireflies, with smouldering coals for eyes.

"Did ya miss me, Tiger?"

Her voice was the sweetest thing in the world. Gunther was very much surprised that his final vision was even capable of speech. Maybe, just maybe, he had admired his sister-in-craft more than he'd thought.

"Alesia," he confessed to the blinding vision, so bright as to burn a sensuous silhouette into his retinas. "I am sorry—"

Then the Efreet was gone. It had taken the Void Sorceress with her, leaving behind a mist of dark blood and burning air.

Gunther's mind jolted back to reality.

That was no vision! His mind screamed at him. You dimwit! That was Alesia in the flesh!

"Alesia!" his voice boomed at the retreating form now fleeing from him like a falling star. "Beware! She's feeding off the Black Sun!"

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

The supernatural confidence of the Djinns suited Alesia well.

She hadn't felt the need to consider meagre offerings like strategy.
After all, she was flame incarnate; a Djinn manifested in the material realm, a Demi-Goddess of fire.

What was an illusion before absolute power? What was trickery and subterfuge before unquestionable force?

A halo of plasma and fire coalesced around Alesia as she blasted towards the Tower. A ring of superheated hair blew from her passage as the barrier of sound itself was sundered by her supersonic flight.

The Tower rapidly grew larger
She could now see specks, fighting in the distance.
Rapidly, specks became individuals; one white, one radiant, and two that were nondescript.

The white one was Elizabeth, one of the plebeian looking ones was Walken. The radiant one was Gunther, meaning the last mote was Ferris.

Alesia already had her priorities sorted - Elizabeth would burn first, then Walken would follow her fate.

She saw Gunther making a corkscrew turn, retaliating as he spiralled, catching Elizabeth as she dodged.
She saw Elizabeth retaliate.
She saw Gunther becoming wounded by a dark sliver of Void.
A new fury exploded in Alesia's chest. The tail of searing flame that trailed her passage changed from white-hot to dazzling.

"Did ya missed me, Tiger?" Alesia fired off a mirthful Message spell just before impact. It felt like a lifetime before she'd seen Gunther, and her heart soared to know that he was alive.

But kisses and hugs would have to wait. There was a wicked business to concluded before they could lick each other's wounds and find commiseration in the commonality of their grief.

WHAM!

Alesia ensured that her rigid flame-shield slammed into Elizabeth with superhuman force. The impact was such that had it not been for Alesia's elemental form; both combatants would have become the mingled mince, forming a human rissole.

There was a satisfying crunch when she'd struck the void witch, feeling the shock of her body-blow reverberate through the tiny woman's frail form. To the Scarlet Sorceress' surprise, the Void Mage did not simply cease to exist, nor was she cut in twain by the force of Alesia's assault.

Alesia's combat instincts screamed for her to continue her assault.

With one hand, she fired a jet stream of blue-white flames in the opposite direction, cutting her inertia dead in the air. The dizzying manoeuvre was just enough to send the sprawling body away from Elizabeth, whose silhouette exploded into a mess of dark worms issued straight from the Void.

"Flaming Hand!"

The air ignited— the revolting creatures ceased to be.

"Watch out! There's a…"

Gunther's warning came too late. His flight spell was many degrees slower than Alesia' rocket-powered acceleration. Sobel's conjured Black Blade emerged from the burning mass, cutting the air with an unholy shriek as it aimed for Alesia's heart.

With no time to react, Alesia swung her arms downward, instinctively opening her palms to catch the incoming projectile.

CLANG!

To the surprise of all, the vorpal blade had not taken off Alesia's forearm as Sobel had expected. Instead, Alesia's elemental body of plasma caught the flat-edge an inch from her torso, enclosed between her palms.

Alesia's scalp crawled.

Who the hell catches a Morden's Blade with their bare hands?! Her rational mind felt challenged by her surreal circumstance. Furthermore, what the hell does one do next after catching a dancing vorpal blade?

On instinct, Alesia knew what to do.
White-hot flames blew from her palms until the air ignited with blue-green bursts. The mana of the Black Blade sizzled, then exploded into globs of dark ink, raining down into the city below.

"There's a PhD there for whoever explains that phenomenon," Gunther remarked dryly, finally reaching his companion's side.

"The fuck did the bitch go?" Alesia looked around, bewildered. "That was a simulacrum thing! Where's her real body?"

"Aye, and a dangerously self-destructive one," Gunther observed unhappily. "What did I tell you about rushing in, Allie?"

Alesia shot Gunther a look that spoke volumes, her eyes two glowing cores rolling in the molten sockets of her face. Gunther coughed and averted his gaze.

"Thanks for saving my life," the Paladin remarked quietly. "I am sorry about our Master, whatever happened, I am sure you did your best."

"Well, it wasn't enough." Alesia's voice lost the vivacity she had possessed just a moment ago.

Sighing, she looked up at the dark sun hanging mercilessly over the blue sky, an unmoving eclipse which cast its deadly blessing over all that it surveyed.

"How do we kill that?" Alesia asked.

Gunther dearly wished he had an answer to her question.

"Well, Walken said that her Void was weak to Lightning. Walken also said that the Melbourne and Brisbane towers are incoming, ETA, soon." Gunther did not sound optimistic.

Alesia shook her head, sending out a swarm of fireflies.

"They don't have anyone at the Magus level."

"I know," Gunther affirmed.

"Gunther!" A Message spell bloomed next to Gunther's ear. It was Irene Ferris. "I don't know what you did, but something just came out of the Black Sun!"

Gunther relayed the Message to Alesia, whose flaming eyes smouldered.

"Gunther!" Irene's voice took on a tone of urgency.

"We're coming back now."

The two ascended, with Alesia leading. From afar, the duo appeared as though two shooting stars moving to accost the dusky sky. Closer now, they could see that Ferris was right to worry. The Void-sun was changing now, taking on a more malicious tone. The shadowy blight it was dispensing was becoming more intense, hungrier and more potent. The tingling coldness one felt when it touched the skin was now an icy bite that permeated to the bone.

"Its good to see you again, Alesia," Ferris muttered when Alesia pulled up. "We need all the help we can get."

Walken, wounded and discretely loitering a distance away, tried to make himself scarce. Unfortunately, there was no escaping Alesia's smouldering orbs.

"Alesia, not now." Gunther wanted to place a hand on her shoulder but feared to lose his limb should his Sister-in-craft's emotions supersede her rationality.

A moment of dangerous crossroads hung in the air; the silence punctuated only by the ambient thrum of the dark sun's magic.
As they spoke, bursts of enervating energy emitted from the dark sun. Dark tendrils, distinct and indistinct, emerged like curious tongues, tasting the air for prey.

"Don't let them touch you!" Gunther alerted the others, recalling the vision that had been agonisingly wrought by Mark Chandler at the cost of his sister's soul.

The others hadn't needed Gunther's warning to tell them that much.

As the prehensile tendrils reached out, seemingly ignoring the limitations of space, the trio was forced to duck and weave, alternating between shielding and abjuring the shadowy appendages.

It was Gunther who first noticed that Alesia's flames were no longer swaying chaotically in the air. Instead, the heat of her Aegis of Flame was streaming in one direction, feeding the heart of the sun.

Walken, who'd been paying particular attention toward Alesia, likewise realised what was happening.

"It's penetrating our Shields!" he Messaged the others. "We're not going to last much longer under this."

"How shall we regroup?" Ferris inquired carefully, though the question may as well be rhetorical. If they were to flee from the sun now, it would only grow stronger. If they couldn't contain it now, somehow, how could they defeat it when it matured?

"Ideas?" The collected Magisters and Maguses communed while keeping the tentacles and tendrils at bay. Each appendage seemed to possess a life of its own, hunting and feeling the air for nourishment. Gunther did not doubt that if they were to leave, the tendrils would be felicitously hunting the lesser Mages below.

When none of them spoke, Ferris made a suggestion.

"How about we wait for the other Towers. We can attempt a parallel octagramic mandala Dispel when Uther and Lin get here. Myself, Alesia, Walken, Gunther, and two fresh Magisters. We can use their Tower Mages for the other two spots. Surely they would have brought their Paladins along as well."

Walken interjected.

"Impossible, there is no way we're going to be able to attune the magic, not with the tendrils attacking us. Look at that thing; you think the other two are going to let their Tower Mages serve as fodder while we take time to commune and align our mana?"

"Not to mention—"

Walken narrowly dodged a grasping tentacle. His flight agility had been drastically affected by the injury earlier. The Magister's body desperately needed a Greater Restoration, but there were no healers powerful enough to be present in a battle of this magnitude. A mid-tier Cleric would only serve as targets of opportunity, feeding Elizabeth's hunger for mana and vitality.

"… the Tower has been losing altitude since a moment ago."

"Well, you got any better ideas?" Ferris demanded cattily.

"Fuck this," Alesia suddenly announced. "Gunther, cover me."

Before Gunther could answer, Alesia shot upward like a falling star compelled by Reverse Gravity.

A triple layer of mandalas formed under her feet as she blasted through the tendrils barring her way, arriving dead centre of the hovering sun, just beyond the borders of its nether realm.

A host of tendrils moved to usurp her elemental energy, abjured by blasts of light emanating from below, slicing and dicing the intruding mass.

"Light Screen!"

A double glazed barred the tentacles for the moment.

"Allie," he began, but the worrying words in this throat were mute before he could speak them. The battle for Sydney was her fight as well as his. Even if they swapped places, Gunther knew he would have also ignored Alesia and persisted what he thought was necessary and right.

They were birds of a feather in many ways, they who were proteges of Henry Kilroy, inheritors of their Master's gifts, not to mention his sins. If Elizabeth exists today because of their Master's weakness, then for the sake of the Master who brought them life, his students would conclude their Master's life's work. For better or worse, there must be closure to the chapter.

"I'll cover you," Gunther said instead. "Sphere of Light!"

An aura of brilliant radiance expanded around the two Mages. Used defensively, the light channelled from the Quasi-Elemental Plane of Radiance consumed all beings of darkness, dispelled all things whose origins lay within the Negative Plane. Gunther had saved the spell as a trump card, an eleventh-hour attempt at repealing Elizabeth's mortal strike— alas, now, he felt no qualms burning the high-tier Evocation if it meant sheltering Alesia.

The flames that sheathed Alesia grew focused, losing that chaotic quality so endearing to fire, instead weaving themselves into her body. Alesia was already an impressive Evoker, but the spell she was attempting was a tier higher. As with all things magical, there were dire repercussions for exceeding one's limitations. At best, the invocation would wreak havoc upon her Astral body and rupture her mana conduits; at worst, she could become severely debilitated by mana burn. No Mage ever wanted to make this choice, but now was as a particular time, and all Gunther could do was be his dearest's protector.

In a moment, the Djinn's borrowed mana poured from Alesia's body, feeding the spell manifesting above. Her crimson Caracal fused itself into the manifest, expending its Essence to shield its Master from the negative feedback of the over-channelled sorcery. Though the Caracal spirit wasn't a sapient being like Sufina, it instinctively prioritised its Master's life over the continued existence of its ego.

A heaviness smothered the air, a feeling of dreaded oppression. The ambient temperature of the air skyrocketed as a portal to the Elemental Plane of Fire gave birth to a massive fireball a dozen meters in circumference. Smouldering with spluttering flames, Alesia pointed a finger heavenward, then moved it towards the nadir in a swift, violent motion.

"Meteor Strike!"

The burgeoning mass of plasma began to move.

It first moved ponderously, but as it picked up speed, an elongated tail of orange-red flames began to grow, casting an orange haze over the dark recesses of the void-sun, turning its translucent tendrils orange and yellow.

Besides the dark sun, Gunther clutched the exhausted Alesia, heedless of her flaming torso, pulling her from the path of her AoE spell.

"Teleport!"

With the Crimson Caracal consumed by Alesia's spell, Gunther was no longer confident that Alesia's AOEs could discriminate between friend and foe.

As the two faded amidst a swirl of quicksilver mana, the forces of Void and Fire collided.

To the observers below, marvelling and screaming at the sight of two celestial bodies in a mortal contest, it was akin to a reverse eclipse.

Above them, a dark sun was lit up by a meteor of raw elemental fire.
To the observer's surprise, there was no cacophonic explosion, no blast ring that sent shockwaves below to trouble the already sundered city. There wasn't even the sound of two objects meeting in violent disharmony.

There was only a hiss—

A terrible, indescribable hiss as the dark sun began to consume the meteor. The meeting of two celestial bodies of energy was a foreboding sight that would trouble researchers for years to come. What would happen when a strategic ritual designed for mass vampiric absorption met an overwhelming force? At what equivalence does the consumption win out, when do they negate one another, and at what magnitude does the spell force disrupt the ritual's mandala?

Unfortunately for Alesia and her battered, exhausted company, the answer did not ring in their favour.

Not even a Meteor, one tier below the city-destroying Meteor Swarm, a strategic spell used only in conflicts of mutually assured destruction, could destroy the dark sun.

As Alesia grew increasingly weaker, feeling the power of her meteor wane, they could once again see that the Black Sun was regaining its exhausted energies.

Even if over half of the sun's initial mass dissolved, there were plenty of Mages and NoMs, flora and fauna below to feed its hunger.

When the mass of the meteor finally dissipated, they could see for a brief moment, the silhouette of a woman in the darkness, shrouded by the void tendrils.

Elizabeth must be laughing at them, mocking their last-ditch attempt.
Then she faded from view, and tendrils once again manifested from the heart of the blighted celestial object.

Alesia's companions scattered as before, only now further weakened and spent.

"Gunther!"

Alesia's cry of alarm shook her brother-in-craft from the despairing revelry of assured defeat.

A tendril had found the Scarlet Sorceress.

The cognisance came as much as a surprise to Gunther as it would have for anyone of them. Alesia was the most agile and empowered for combat, for her to be caught, she must be genuinely exhausted.

To their relief, Gunther had enough mana remaining to severed the nether-tentacle with a blast of light.

Alesia's problems, however, were just beginning. The sorceress' flaming form suddenly became a chaotic mess of spluttering flames, appearing and disappearing about her body.

Instantly, Gunther realised that the Djinn that had been the source of the Efreeti Transformation was to blame. Now that Alesia was bereft of mana, exhausted in spirit, and physically wounded by her overambitious spell of mass destruction, it was maliciously trying to cause the death of its host!

Even as Gunther approached, dodging several jellyfish tendrils of void-matter himself, Alesia lost herself to another tendril.

Gunther swore under his breath; his mana was hardly inexhaustible. They had been fighting for half-an-hour now, throwing out one spell after another, soon they would all be out of mana and helpless.

"Scorching Radiance!" Another blast freed Alesia from her impending crisis.

Gunther tackled his craft-sister in midair and dove downwards for the cover of the crumbling Tower. A searing pain ignited across his arm, hands and chest. The scent of scorched flesh filled his nostrils.

The fucking Djinn! Gunther swore. It dared to attack him! Had Gunther not been flame-aligned himself, the assault would have floored him, debilitated him with an unexpected fatal blow.

"Shit!" Gunther swore. "Allie, hold on!"

Though the distraction lasted only a second, it was enough.

First, a single tendril, then two more, and then a dozen, quickly wrapped around Gunther and Alesia's falling form, compounding the crisis that Gunther faced from the rebellious Djinn.

Gunther was not a man prone to admit to despair, but now he felt it distinctly. If he and Alesia were gone, who would carry on Henry's legacy? Would his Master always be remembered as the husband of the madwoman who consumed all of Sydney? What of all his subordinates, all those NoMs that awaited salvation below? Who would save them now?

DING! A Message alarm fired off beside Gunther's head.

Gunther answered it in disbelief.

"Gwen?"

Rolling thunder echoed across the cloudless sky, growing louder and louder with each passing mile.

Their youngest sister-in-craft had arrived.