Aetherios System: Whirlwind

Chapter 35: Resentments

The arena fell silent as the barrier bubble snapped in place, leaving only Alex and Zach alone.

Normally, Alex would have rushed forward to begin the fight, throwing some probing attacks to figure out his opponent. But that wasn’t the case this time.

Alex already knew what his opponent was capable of. He had fought alongside Zach for months.

Now, it was as if they were back on the soccer pitch where Alex had first seen him. Two soldiers standing against each other. The same heart-pounding uncertainty. The same deadly glare in Zach’s eyes.

Alex hated feeling like that. Like he needed to hate his fellow worldstrider, it went against the promise he had made to himself after the battle against the chimeras.

It was Zach who moved first.

The dark mage flicked his spear behind himself and simply vanished, his form collapsing into the dark edge of the metal platform, melting into the shadows.

Alex’s skipped a beat, realizing he had been distracted and allowed himself to have lost the initiative. He spun, eyes sweeping the arena, [Aether Sight] going at full capacity. But even that struggled to find him. Zach had long since trained with Alex to ensure his stealth was unparalleled, even against Alex’s [Aether Sight]. His aether was subtle and dampened to the point he nearly transformed his presence into a perfect void.

Shit. He thought. I might have helped him get too good.

Then the strike came.

A spear flashed from behind him. A gleam of cold enchanted silver pierced the air. Alex felt the suddenly condensed aura and twisted, bringing up the hilt of his aether weapon, already in the shape of a sword and just barely deflecting Zach’s spearhead away.

He countered instantly, the sword unraveling into a curved blade that he slashed out with, forcing Zach back into reality and retreating a step. His teammate looked at him for a moment, his expression calm almost to the point of being detached, before the shadows swallowed him and he vanished again.

“Still hiding behind tricks?” Alex yelled after him.

“Still underestimating me?” Zach’s voice came from everywhere at once. Even without walls to bounce off of, it sounded like a cold echo.

The next assault came in flurries as spears of condensed darkness stabbed at Alex from different angles, their tips leaving black wisps behind in the air. Alex ducked under one, parried another, and began blocking the five more that followed. The weapon in his hand flickered through forms to make the blocks as easy as possible with the many angles—spear, hammer, blade again. Blue aether sparks burst each time they met.

Zach appeared again for an instant, close enough that Alex could see the black of his pupils, then struck.

Alex met the spear with reaction speed alone, his weapon forming a short sword as he shoved the spear to the left side, their faces inches apart at that point.

“You’re faster than before,” Alex said.

“I’ve been practicing.”

The shadows around Zach deepened, his outline blurring as darkness crawled up his arms. His stance changed into a looser footing as he finally began using his martial style against Alex.

The world around him shifted just a tad out of alignment. The edges of the arena seemed to warp in his sight; his opponent’s position blurred at the corners even when he wasn’t moving. It was the feeling of fighting in a dream. Everything felt sluggish, every movement just half a step slower, every thought a little dulled.

Alex gritted his teeth, forcing his eyes to stay open and focus.

He knew Zach’s fighting style [Umbral Reverie], and how it worked. The Martial skills in the style were well suited for Zach, focusing on precise and sudden attacks while doing exactly what he was feeling now, playing with his senses.

It was a huge problem for Alex, because it attacked one of his biggest weaknesses, mental defenses.

Alex was a physical powerhouse, and his martial style let him dish out and endure huge amounts of damage at the same time. And he had ensured his spells covered defense, offense, and target control. External attacks were easy to handle for him.

Meanwhile, his Wyrm-blood made poison nearly pointless.

With [Aether Sight], standard illusions like the ones Peter made with his light spells were also ineffective, as he could see the aether that made up the illusions.

But Zach’s martial style worked differently. It insidiously infected his mind and played with his thoughts nearly directly. The illusions and distortions that he saw weren’t from aether constructs. It was all from his own brain, either trying to overcorrect or forming the hallucinations wholesale from the influence of Zach.

And he had nearly no counter to it. Even with Obby trying to help him, it was tough. The rock used Alex’s senses to function. So, Obby was affected as much as he was.

He couldn’t try to rely solely on his reactions and melee combat instincts anymore.

Alex shot a pulse of aether into the ground, channeling [Aether Grasp]. Translucent-blue chains surged from his feet, snaking out and fanning around him in all directions. The bindings lashed across the field, slamming into empty air for a second before finally finding purchase as Zach’s outline flickered back into existence.

“Got you,” Alex muttered.

He released the second spell, [Energy Spear].

The air howled as three condensed blades of pressurized energy shot forward. Zach spun despite the bindings around his legs. The movement conjured shadows which wrapped around him to deflect two of the attacks—but the third clipped his shoulder, spraying not blood, but fragments of black aether.

Zach spoke faintly. “Nice try.”

With a flick of his wrist, Alex’s chains snapped like dry twine.

The dark mage lunged forward, the spear spinning in his hands in a dazzling display of control and dexterity. Every thrust came from a new direction, at impossible angles that blurred through air and shadow, further distorted by the perception effect of his martial skill.

Alex parried the first, blocked the second with a flash of [Energy Projection], but the third slid past and tore a deep line across his upper right arm.

Pain flared from the hit in white-hot throbs, but Alex didn’t retreat. He rotated on his heel, hips swinging, as his weapon shifted again—a two-handed hammer this time—and slammed it forward. Zach barely managed to deflect it down toward their feet, where the weapon bent the metal platform on impact.

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Then Zach darted backward into a retreat, but Alex followed it up with a point-blank [Aether Burst].

The explosion of blinding light swallowed both of them.

When the flash cleared, Alex was standing alone at the platform’s center.

Zach knelt several meters away, spear braced in the ground. Blood ran down his arm, but he had no visible new injury, and his expression hadn’t changed.

Alex took a step forward. “You’re holding back.”

Zach’s upper lip curved slightly. “So are you.”

“I didn’t think you’d go easy on me,” he said.

“Just savoring the fight. I’ve been wanting this for a long time now.”

“I figured that was the case.” Alex changed his weapon back into a shortsword and lifted it into a guard. “I just don’t get why. We have to fight here, no way around that, but we are supposed to be supporting each other. Yet, it feels like you are happy it turned out this way.

“You don’t get it,” Zach set his spear into a low fool’s guard. “She’s devastated, distracted. She barely looks at me now. All she talks about… is you. Your strength, your tenacity and drive. Your constitution and that Hydra core. After everything I’ve done to help her, she still is living in your shadow, obsessed with the authority and prestige she lost the second we woke up in this world. Taken from her by Eric, then by you becoming the de facto leader.”

Alex wasn’t sure what he was talking about at first, but it didn’t take long for realization to dawn on him. His eyes shot just a bit wider, and then flickered up the stands where the other worldstriders were sitting. Holly was there, and Garret, Peter, Allie… but his gaze went to the blonde-haired woman with the fiery red temper; Kate.

“She’s one of the strongest in our group already,” he said. “She doesn’t have to prove anything.”

Zach’s scowl deepened before he placed his second hand on his spear’s haft. “God damn it, man, you don’t get it.”

“Well, explain it to me then!” He shot back.

He watched as Zach’s eyes moved to the stands as well, then to the bubble surrounding them. Inside the barrier, no one could hear what they were saying. It muffled sound far too much for even a Magus outside to hear.

“She’s obsessed with proving herself to you, Alex. Even back at the exhibition match in Terraxum, she wasn’t in her right mind to fight until you talked to her. She insisted on joining the team that went into that Forge Dungeon with you. She talks about Holly always being there, being in the way.”

“Oh…” he finally said, lowering his sword.

Zach scoffed. “Yeah, oh.”

“Look, I’m not trying to get your way, man.”

“Trying to, and being in, are different things.”

Alex sighed. “Look, if you think beating me is going to earn you her attention—”

“It won’t,” he agreed. “But it’ll feel oh so satisfying.”

“I mean, okay, sure. But again, I’m not the reason for this fight, man. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, I know. And that makes it even harder. You’re a good guy Alex, that’s part of why she… It’s why I don’t actually hate you. It just feels like it’s the only thing I can do to…”

He stopped for a moment and Alex nodded back to him.

“Yeah, I get it,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “Look at this eh, probably said more words to me now than you have, like, ever.”

“Trying to build up our relationship at a time like this?” Zach smirked. “Add me to your harem?”

“Hehe, yeah, sure, something like that.” Alex raised his sword once again. “Look, I’m not going to pretend I know how your feeling, or whether this is the right way to go about things. What the hell do I know about people? I’m just a crazed battle maniac. But, I know we have a fight to continue, and I hope you stop going easy on me.”

Zach looked at him for a long few seconds before finally giving him a grin, the first genuine one Alex might have ever seen.

“Alright, Alex, Mr. Coreless Enigma mage. Let’s fight, then.”

“Bring it.”

They moved at the same time.

Aether spiked, steel clashed. Each of their strikes met with another, soundless and deafening all at the same time. Every movement was predicted and countered one after another in a near-endless stream. Each knew what the other was going to do with a familiarity that only came from training beside someone for months, knowing how they breathed, how they thought.

Friend against friend.

The air cracked with every impact, spells weaving into strikes, shadows bleeding into wind. The air between them shimmered with aether distortion, twin storm-fronts colliding again and again.

Alex’s blade flickered between shapes with every breath, changing from sword to spear to a blunted hammer, catching Zach’s sweeping strikes or intercepting his thrusts by a hair. While Zach’s movements deftly slipped him out of reach of every punch and direct jab Alex attempted, slipping him to the side with each downstroke of his blade.

Zach was somehow moving faster than him, even if Alex felt his agility stat was higher. Somehow, the dark mage just had better control of his body, his movement more precise.

After a few seconds of exchanges, Zach pressed forward, stepping through the lingering shadow-mist his attacks had been leaving behind the whole fight, his body dematerializing like a phantom. As before, Alex tried to parry by instinct, his [Aether Sight] sketching the faint glow of Zach’s dark essence as it curved around him.

He felt he could just barely keep u, maybe.

“Too slow, Alex!” Zach’s voice came through the shadows distorted.

Zach’s hand shot out, his fingers curling inward toward his palm, and the shadows beneath Alex stretched until his own silhouette latched onto his boots.

Alex froze mid-step.

The darkness climbed at incredible speed, snaking up his legs, his torso, until the world around him dimmed and the sound of his own breathing and rushing blood faded.

Then came the whisper in his mind. It was like a low and sultry hiss curling against his ear.

Sleep.

For a moment, Alex found that he wasn’t standing up anymore. He was falling, weightless in the dark. His thoughts fractured around him, pieces of him dissolving into the murk. He saw brief flashes — the chimera caves, the blood, laughter somewhere in the distance, a hulking badger, an undead warrior, a single large eye looming down at him from above—

Then Obby’s voice reach to him through the void. “Alex! Wake the hell up! NOW!”

The shout came from somewhere inside him, and it was loud enough to rouse him from the fog he had been drifting in.

Alex’s eyes snapped open, the arena flashing back into being, and the first thing he felt was pain. Deep, soul-wrenching pain. He looked inward at his mind, scanning the area of his soulspace, the Wyrm-heart, his broken core, the strange runic connection to Obby, the aperture of his gate—there, he saw it.

His entire body trembled as he reached inward and yanked at the sharp-edged fracture of dark aether that he found lodged in the soulgate leading into his soulspace.

Agony lanced through him a moment more, then he was himself again.

He found his senses flooding back into him just as the blade of Zach’s spear was extracted from his stomach. He didn’t feel any pain from the attack, which was probably due to one of Zach’s martial skills. Still, he was awake now.

The next attack brought Zach’s spear at his throat. Alex’s body moved, his aetherblade shot up, parrying the blow at the last instant, the force sending both of them sliding apart across the platform.

When their eyes met, Alex saw the brief flicker of surprise on Zach’s face. He hadn’t expected Alex to snap out of that.

Zach’s mouth tightened, his expression darkening. His stance shifted into a more heavy footed one, and he gripped his spear differently, one hand sliding higher toward the blade.

It looked like that was the best of his mental attacks. With Alex having broken out of it, he had to change his approach.

The air around Zach grew colder, the light bending faintly toward him as shadows folded into hanging wisps in the shape of wings.

Alex grimaced at this.

He had no idea what Zach had been training lately, what secrets he’d learned while practicing with the martial sects all over the capital. The man had been tight lipped about his improvements the last couple of weeks. The aura coming off him now was unlike anything Alex had felt from him before.

“A new spell? Martial Skill?” Alex asked.

“Spell,” he said back.

“What’s it called?”

“Oh, I’ll tell you after I beat you.” Zach winked.