Vacant Throne

Alyssa should have guessed that the brigands were being led by an arcanist. She had expected a conversation. A hostile one, yes, but at least a few words from the Chief. Instead, all she got were spell cards from him. Literal spell cards flying across the battlefield.

She wasn’t sure what kind of magic he was using. The Chief flicked his cards like some kind of magician. They started glowing before they left his fingers and, once they struck something, a whole variety of effects popped up. The blue one formed a whole glacier between the two of them. The miniature mountain of ice obstructed her line of sight, but didn’t stop him. She barely noticed from the corner of her eye as a glowing gold card boomeranged around the glacier directly toward her.

A wall of steel, formed with Tenebrael’s power, intercepted the card. Visible branches of electricity scored the steel as the panel toppled flat against the ground. Alyssa had to let out a small sigh, glad that the gold card hadn’t had concussive force behind it. The steel had not been anchored or even braced. It would have been thrown into her.

Alyssa would have to be careful before using that trick again.

Emboldened by the presence of their leader, more than a few of the more mundanely armed brigands advanced around the glacier. Their courage wavered as they caught sight of Fela. The hellhound was not cleanly groomed at the moment. Blood matted her fur and dripped from her claws, great plumes of fire roared above her head from the corners of her eyes. She was a terrifying sight to behold.

“Keep them safe,” Alyssa said as she launched a fireball toward another blue card as it spun around the glacier from a different angle. “I’ve got to take care of the arcanist.”

Alyssa didn’t wait for a response. She trusted Fela. Fela trusted her. She doubted she had even needed to say something in the first place.

Two more cards looped around the glacier, one blue and one gold. The fireball seemed to work for the last one, destroying it before it could activate its effects. She did the same to these two then immediately started running around the column of ice. It might have been possible to use All Shall Burn to pierce straight through it, but if the Chief had moved even a step to either side, it would have missed completely.

Though the idea wasn’t that bad in principle. There were a lot more of them than there were of Alyssa’s side. As Alyssa ran, she fired off several beams of intense heat directly into and through the glacier. Even if they didn’t hit anything on the other side, random laser beams might make people wary of sneaking around that side of the glacier.

Lasers weren’t keeping people at bay on her side. Her gun, freshly reloaded during the brief respite between reuniting with Red and the Chief launching his attack, worked well enough.

Spectral Chains wrapped around one brigand, pinning his arms to his sides to stop an attack. A point blank shot to the skull made his body go limp, letting Alyssa release the chains so that she could keep moving. Without breaking stride, she fired off another two shots at the next nearest woman, putting her down cold.

Alyssa continued around, alternating between magic and bullets and even a hint of Tenebrael’s magic. All to keep anyone away from her at bay and anyone who got too close dead. Cards were still flying around. Some had likely struck where she had been standing. Hopefully Volta and Red were far enough away to avoid getting hit. A few were clearly aimed more toward her current position, but none actually hit her. The glacier obstructed vision for everyone, not just her.

One midnight black card bit into the side of the glacier well behind Alyssa. She ignored it right up until she felt it. With one foot in the air, about to step down, Alyssa found herself suddenly off balance as something pulled her backwards. It didn’t last long. It was something like the inverse of a shove. But that reverse shove was enough to send her tumbling into a small pit.

A pit that hadn’t been there before.

It was like someone had come and carved a perfectly circular bit of negative space out from the ground and the glacier. The Terminator appearing after time travel came to mind. She didn’t know what rank the spells he had been using were. They didn’t seem to be that highly ranked. Ice could be created at as low as Rank One. But the method of using them with the flying cards and the black card likely meant that he was much higher. Maybe Four. Five?

It wouldn’t matter if he died.

Lying on her back, Alyssa sent two more fireballs toward incoming cards. No more ignoring them just because they might miss. If she had been three steps back, she might have been… whatever had happened to the ground and the glacier. Destroyed completely.

One brigand approached. Her first shot missed. The second tore open his neck. Blood spurted out a lot further than she thought possible before his hand could clamp around the wound. It probably wouldn’t help much. As she got to her feet, he stumbled into the bowled pit, landing on his face.

He did not get back up.

Using the pit as cover, Alyssa fished through her satchel for another magazine. Her current one wasn’t empty yet, but she didn’t know when she would get another chance to reload.

Rearmed, Alyssa advanced around the glacier until she caught sight of the Chief once again. In one hand, he held a deck of cards. His other hand held a glowing red card between his index and middle fingers. He looked like he had been about to throw it before he spotted Alyssa.

Arm already raised to throw the card in one direction, he had to completely shift to aim at Alyssa.

Plenty of time to fire her already raised pistol.

The first shot hit directly in his shoulder. The card he had been trying to throw slipped from his fingers as his entire arm jerked back. Alyssa fired two more times, but neither were actually necessary.

The red card tumbled to the ground at the Chief’s feet. The moment it hit, a tower of fire appeared in his place. Alyssa staggered back, raising a hand to shield herself from the flames. A few of the brigands closest to where he had been, caught in the conflagration, began screaming out cries of pure pain.

Alyssa did not lower her pistol. One of the brigands looked to be missing an arm and half his body was blackened and charred skin thanks to the fire. It was unlikely that the Chief had survived something that could do that, but arcanists had lots of tricks. The Chief had a whole deck of cards in his hand that he might have been able to use in the brief instant before the card landed.

The spell was not long lasting. The fire died down in a matter of moments.

Three sets of skeletons, flesh and clothing completely burned off, were lying practically on top of each other. Most of the bones weren’t even held together by anything anymore. Arms and legs, or the bones making them up, had rolled off to the sides. There were a few scraps of metal. A warped sword. What might have been a buckle or some kind of harness.

The three were completely unidentifiable. It was likely that one of the three had been the Chief seconds ago, but now…

Alyssa scanned the area, looking for any sign that he might have survived. It didn’t look likely. Most of the brigands apparently thought the same. She could see their crushed morale on their faces. The Chief had likely been the only one left who could properly fight off another arcanist, let alone monsters like Fela and Red.

It wasn’t long before the brigands were completely routed. It started with a few turning and running as fast as they could. They were the catalyst that led to the others fleeing as well.

Alyssa let them go. With the camp having been nearly decimated, they weren’t likely to be able to resume their activities. At least not anytime soon. And if she didn’t let them go, then she would have had to figure out what to do about the horses and other animals that they had. She couldn’t just leave them.

“Fela,” Alyssa called out. The hellhound was quite eagerly chasing after some of the fleeing brigands. At Alyssa’s call, she stopped and glanced back. One of her prey used the apparent distraction to try to swing a sword in her direction.

It… didn’t work.

After one more brigand went down and a look at the nearest few, daring them to try something similar, Fela bounded up to Alyssa.

“Can you go find the draken? Make sure Red hasn’t hurt them and bring them here.” Alyssa had asked Izsha to try to keep Red with them. That had obviously failed. She somewhat expected them to follow after Red, but Alyssa had also told them to avoid getting hurt. Since they hadn’t shown up, Alyssa was hoping that they had simply decided to hang back.

“What about you?”

“I’ll be fine.” Even if the brigands did try to rally and launch another attack, Alyssa doubted that they would get very far. She had been quite concerned about the prospect of facing a hundred people on her way into the camp. Now, she felt like she could take on a hundred all on her own.

Maybe that is the adrenaline talking. Now that she was looking, her hands were trembling. Her arms had goosebumps despite the relative warmth. Even the giant glacier wasn’t cooling the air enough to overpower the heat. Although pressing her face up against it would probably feel nice. Alyssa decided against it with a shake of her head. She had seen A Christmas Story. The heavy layer of sweat on her face would probably freeze and stick her to it.

“Just get the draken here so we can leave,” Alyssa said. “I’m going to see if I can’t do anything for that stupid cursed sword.”

Fela looked a little hesitant about leaving, but eventually nodded and took off away from the brigand camp.

Despite Tenebrael having been halfway across the camp, supping on only the finest of criminal souls, she apparently heard Alyssa. “You should be able to do something,” she said as she drifted closer. “My lovely little reaper,” she added. “That was quite a feast.”

Alyssa completely ignored the… is that supposed to be praise? Whatever it was, she ignored it. People had died, yes. They were slavers. Alyssa wouldn’t lose sleep over it. Even still, she didn’t really like Tenebrael gushing about it. Focusing on the first part of what Tenebrael had said, Alyssa shook her head. “I can create whole bodies, but I’ve never modified an existing one.” She kept her eyes open as she circled around the glacier. After having told Fela that she would be fine, she didn’t want to embarrass herself by dying to a stray arrow. If these people even had bows. She hadn’t seen any so far, but that didn’t mean that they had no archers at all.

Unconcerned with the potentially dangerous situation, Tenebrael just shrugged. “Perfect target to test a new ability on then, isn’t it. A relic like the cursed sword doesn’t care about the body. If the body dies, it will just get a new one. Eventually.”

She had a point there. They could probably just toss the sword into the remaining brigands and have a new Red in… “How long does the process take to turn someone normal into a host of a cursed sword?”

Tenebrael shrugged. “The soul of the one being possessed is ripe for harvest after about three to six months. I presume that the cursed sword has full control after that. Likely for a time beforehand as well.”

“Can a cursed sword die?”

“Of course. Much like a human, if you damage the vessel beyond recovery, the soul must be collected. It just so happens that a cursed sword’s vessel is a hunk of metal. Much harder to significantly damage compared to flesh and blood. Metal also ages a lot slower.”

“Metal ages?”

“Everything ages. By definition. Though I suppose in this context, we could say that a cursed sword would perish due to corrosion far sooner than it would die of old age. Assuming nothing changes, cursed swords might well be the last things living in the universe eventually… though with no host, they would be indistinguishable from any other hunk of metal.”

Ugh… “Existential crises on the topic of entropy aside, how would I go about healing a body? You do it with just a touch, right?”

“It is essentially the same process as creating material. The trick is attaching your newly created material to existing material seamlessly. There might also be some material destruction involved in clearing wounds of debris, removing disease, or, as I often do, just remove healthy material up to a point to make the healing simpler. It is such a pain to heal torn flesh. Much easier to just remove everything and start over.”

“Is that what you did to me?” Alyssa asked. She was approaching Volta and Red again. The two were, thankfully, unharmed. Unharmed being relative for Red.

“A few times.”

Tenebrael didn’t sound the least bit concerned about it, so Alyssa tried not to worry as well. Even though it sounded fairly scary to have been destroyed and remade. “I’ve never destroyed something I created. Or anything else for that matter… at least not with your power.” Annihilator probably counted. “Given that her whole leg is off, it is probably covered in all kinds of dirt and grime. Plus the cauterized bits.”

“Like I said, easier to just get rid of all that completely and remake it all.”

“How?”

“I’ll show you,” Tenebrael said, gesturing forward.

“Thanks.” Hurrying forward the last few steps, Alyssa stopped next to Volta and Red. “Are you alright?”

Volta looked far more composed now than when she had first seen Red injured. She stood over her bodyguard and companion, looking roughly how she had been back when first rescued from the captive tent. “I’m fine,” she said, still using her real voice as she had yet to reconstruct her public-facing arcanist body.

“Good.”

“Red, however, wants a new body.”

Alyssa looked down at the cursed sword. Its host looked absolutely distraught. The smile on her face was gone. She just stared down at the sword, gently brushing her fingers over it. It was a strange enough situation that Alyssa had to wonder if there weren’t some remnants of a real person in it. A real person that knew it was being told to throw itself away so that the sword could continue on. Of course, there wasn’t really a person in there. Alyssa could confirm that for herself simply by closing her eyes.

Perhaps it was actually the cursed sword, mourning the loss of a well-liked body. That made much more sense, though didn’t quite explain why it was caressing the sword. Then again, it wasn’t like the sword could touch the body…

“Too bad,” she eventually said.

“Alyssa, be reasonable. Red can’t possibly function like this. There are plenty of humans here who wouldn’t be missed and—”

“I don’t actually care about that in the slightest.” She had killed enough of them that she thought that would have been clear. “Rather, I’m taking into consideration how long it takes to subsume a new host and… well, I want to try a little experiment. I want to heal Red. Completely. To the point where she won’t be able to tell that her leg was ever off in the first place. And if it fails, we can go toss the sword at whatever humans are left here and let them fight over who gets to become the new Red.”

“You can heal her? Even with potions, reattaching a whole limb…”

Alyssa shook her head. “No potions. Just a miracle…” Trailing off, she noticed that Tenebrael had not stopped at Red or Volta. The angel continued onward for a short distance, stopping at Red’s severed leg.

It was her right leg. The one covered in a fair amount of the black and red metallic growths that were quite similar to the sword itself. Alyssa had no idea what that stuff was. She wouldn’t be able to remake it. But hopefully Red would be able to figure that bit out.

Alyssa followed Tenebrael, crouching above the leg.

“Give me your hand,” Tenebrael said.

Shrugging, Alyssa offered her hand. Tenebrael interlaced their fingers before slowly lowering her down to the leg. Their fingers drifted over the muscular thigh until they reached the blackened stump of an end.

Tenebrael paused, hovering just over it. “Now watch,” she said softly.

Alyssa could feel the warmth from Tenebrael intensify. The charred flesh on the leg simply vanished. It didn’t disintegrate or melt away. One moment it was there, the next it simply wasn’t. Blood immediately started leaking from the leg. Without a heart to pump it out, it wasn’t gushing, but it was definitely losing a lot of what was there. Tenebrael started the next process right there.

Tissue formed underneath their fingertips. It was almost exactly the same as how Alyssa had been creating her experimental bodies. Much smoother, but Alyssa suspected that the ease of creation came with practice. Or maybe simply because of what Tenebrael was. Either way, Alyssa focused on how the new flesh grew as if completely naturally off the leg. It wasn’t fused to it. There was no scar tissue. It was just a slightly longer severed leg than it had been before.

Tenebrael finished by forming a smooth skin-like cap over the end. Probably just to seal it all in while they moved the leg over to the rest of Red.

“And that’s that. Simple, right?”

“I wouldn’t say that. But I think I got it.”

Completely unmaking something. Absolute obliteration. Destroying it so thoroughly that it might never have existed. Creation and destruction, Alyssa felt like she had touched the power of the Throne in those concepts.

Cracking her neck side to side, Alyssa looked over to Red. The host was smiling again, though it was something of a nervous smile.

“Alright. Sit still and don’t move.”