Aetherios System: Whirlwind

Chapter 39: Downward and Upward

Holly’s crescent blades shot forward, each screaming through the air in a whir.

Seilor responded by having the tendrils of aether—that she had just used to send Holly flying—grab her own body and maneuver her cleanly through the attacks, dodging all of them.

She was basically puppeteering her own form.

Before the last crescent passed her by, Seilor was forced to drop herself and send the tendrils lashing out at Holly, who had dashed back into melee range.

Aether and metal clashed as Holly swung with blistering speed, her sword light enough in her hand to threaten death many times in only a handful of seconds.

Seilor didn’t need to have the agility to keep up with her, instead, her mind simply needed to be fast enough to move her aether tendrils to intercept.

The two women exchanged attack and defense in a flurry until Holly retreated back again, gaining distance to begin casting another spell.

Seilor saw this, and instead of waiting like before, decided to keep the pressure on Holly. Her hands moved, crafting a new sigil in a circular shape. Once finished, the formed circular array opened, and as if summoned from some other-space, a humanoid soldier carrying a sword and shield, fitted with armor, stepped out of it. It was entirely made of aether, flesh, weapon and armor in all.

The solider didn’t even need a verbal command, and rushed at Holly the instant it stepped onto the platform.

Holly stopped her spellcasting and began kiting the new arrival. It was slower than herself, by a fair margin, making it easy to keep away. But Seilor still had her tendrils, and between them and the aether golem, she began expertly corralling Holly into a smaller section of the platform.

It was plain to see what was happening, and Holly was far from dumb. She couldn’t let herself be penned in, so she moved where the aether golem couldn’t follow her.

Air swirled at Holly’s feet before she jumped. She rose high into the air, nearing the top of the bubble dome before reaching the peak of her jump. Instead of falling, the air underneath her swirled even faster, creating an upforce that kept her aloft.

“She can fly? Merry fucking Poppins, man.” Garret laughed.

“No.” I shook my head. In my [Aether Sight] I saw the flow of Holly’s aether. It looked like she was manipulating her martial style’s movement skill in a way that let her stay in the air. But it was only countering the downward force of gravity and her weight, keeping her balanced. She wasn’t able to move without falling. She was mostly just floating.

Still, it let her stay far out of reach of Seilor’s soldiers, as well as her tendrils.

He saw Holly’s lips moving as she looked to be saying something to Seilor below.

The woman scowled at Holly, and shook her head.

Then Holly appeared to breathe deeply before putting her sword away and raising both her hands.

The air that rushed into Holly’s lungs looked to not stop, for a few long moments, to the point Alex was unsure how she was fitting such a volume inside herself. It abruptly stopped, and Holly clamped her mouth closed, as if she were holding back the air like a dam holding back a lake.

Alex leaned forward now with Lance, he attention focused on the aether moving inside Holly’s body.

It was hard to see exactly what was happening, but he saw two points in Holly’s soulgate light up, and a rush of energy entered her lungs, changing the air trapped within in a way that Alex couldn’t understand.

The necklace flashed again, meaning she was casting some kind of spell, but one that he had never seen her use before.

When Holly opened her mouth again, the air burst back out and collected below her. It had certainly changed while inside her body, as it now contained a faint translucent green color, either from the spell, or the total saturation of her aether inside the gas.

A cloud of the altered air formed below her feet, then began spreading outward and downward, filling the edges of the protective bubble around the platform.

More of Holly’s aether left her mouth as this happened, releasing more of the green-tinted gas along with it.

It was at that moment, Alex realized what was happening. Holly was creating a layer of hyper-condensed air that was slowly moving downward and covering the entire platform. Based on the amount of aether inside it… it would crush whatever was below it.

Seilor’s eyes widened, and she began creating new sigils in the air, firing off attacks at the layer of gas above her. Lances, bolts, blades, explosions, Seilor seemed to conjure them all and sent them flying. Each impacted Holly’s dense air barrier,s and fizzled out, unable to break through it.

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It lowered to the point that Seilor began slamming her aether tendrils against it in a mad flurry. But just like the rest, the attempt made no difference. The conjured soldier was tripped apart, its essence added to and empowering the tendrils, as Seilor tried with renewed effort.

Holly’s spell kept coming.

If the platform wasn’t blocked off by the barrier, and there was more room, she could have simply outrun the slow-moving attack. But the rules of the tournament were in Holly’s favor. She could fill the entire area, giving Seilor no escape.

The mage had tried to pin down Holly, but that tactic was turned against her.

The barrier was just above her head now, and Seilor had to begin to crouch. The edge started to pull in, surrounding her from all sides, and forming a box that was getting smaller and smaller.

Holly had lowered herself to the ground by then, her attention locked onto her spell, slowly working towards crushing her opponent completely.

The Magus who was standing just off the side of the platform hadn’t moved to stop the fight. And the medics hadn’t even readied themselves to rush in. It looked like they knew what was going to happen as well.

Holly raised her hands and began drawing them in towards eachother, the box of collapsing air began closing faster.

Seilor had seconds before she would be smashed.

Finally, at the last moment, she raised her palms out, and Holly stopped.

The air coffin burst apart, and the platform’s barrier popped.

“Winner! Worldstirder Holly Xiao!”

Alex, Garret, Henry, and all the others, including Kate, cheered.

***

It was finally time.

Once more with Allie’s help, his wounds had been fully healed and he was back to top shape. Physically and mentally, he was ready.

His training with Master Sionnadel had honed his combat skills, and beaten a few bad habits out of him. She, along with Sylvaris’ scroll, had even pushed him further with his spell casting and his aether manipulation.

Spells, Meridians, Aether gathering, enchantments, implants, they all came together to make Alex a true superhuman.

There were only two things that he wished he could work on more.

His constitution being one of them. He had a few items still left over that he wanted to incorporate into his Wyrm-heart in attempt to push it up another grade. Pushing his constitution might unlock new aspects of it, helping in future fights.

From what he had been reading in the Dragonkin Manual he’d purchased from the Chimera Dungeon though, it might actually backfire.

The tome didn’t contain huge and deep hidden secrets of Dragons or the descendant cousins that were the arcane beasts. But it did make it clear that mixing too many diluted parts of dragon kin could actually be a detriment in many cases.

Granted, the manual was mostly geared to beast rearing, and the sections on humanoid mages having dragonkin constitutions weren’t vast. Not a single mention of a true Wyrm-heart constitution was even mentioned, for example, instead mostly containing ones like Kate’s. The Hydra constitution. As a result, Alex wasn’t sure he could even fully rely on the information that he was reading, and while he would love to be able to simply ask Amnios, the damned Hydra was still sleeping in his core, no matter Alex’s or Kate’s attempt to rose it.

“The poor guy must be all tuckered out. It takes a lot to shed your inferior fleshy self to attain the proper form, a round rock.” Obby had said after Alex’s fifth attempt at waking the beast’s consciousness.

I don’t think round-object is the pinnacle of being that you claim it is. Alex shot back.

“No?” Obby hummed. “Then why do the dragons yearn for it so, hmm?”

They don’t yearn for it. It’s just a thing that can choose to do. Most don’t, and instead let themselves die.

“Yes, the stupid ones.”

Alex ignored the smug rock. Arguing with Obby about such things was a waste of time and a sure fire way for him to get a headache.

With the constitution upgrade put on hold, that left only the second and final thing Alex was keen to have worked one more.

His [Technique].

With Lady Sionna’s help, he had already been making a decent level of progress in creating his own. The combination of his [Aether Sight] and the experience of his near death epiphanies regarding the [Descending Demon Fist], Alex was certain he was close to completing something.

Adding the contained explosive power of his [Aether Burst] to the raw wrathful destruction of [Descending Demon Fist] had appeared to be straight forward to him. But as he went about his attempts, he had quickly discovered that it was anything but.

It just kept fucking exploding.

The Demon Fist skill did not like playing well with others. Infusing the spell pattern only felt to Alex like it pissed it off, the energy from the martial style attacked the infused aether and annihilated both of them before they could even fully form.

The only upside was that it never got to the point of overlaying Alex’s arm, so when it exploded, it didn’t take his entire limb with it in the process.

He needed more training, and he needed more time.

But he would get neither.

After Henry and Holly, Alex’s fight was on the bracket.

It was a defining fight in many ways. If he could manage to pull off another victory, he was almost certainly making it into the top fifty. Lose, and… well. That wasn’t an option.

He stood in the preparation tunnel, rolling his shoulders, stretching his Aether channels with small jolts of aether he sent through them. He had long since ensured his body and his aether gems were packed full to the brim.

There was no doubt he’d need every bit of it.

Alex inhaled slowly as he stepped through the open archway, blinding white sunlight flooding into his eyes as he transitioned outside.

Across the arena, other figures also stepped forward, each from different angles. They all walked towards the platforms, but only one approached the platform Alex moved toward.

His opponent placed themselves at one end and stopped.

White and green armor gleamed at Alex from across the area. A mask hid his face, but the eyes behind it were familiar to him regardless. He looked the same as the last two times he had seen him, except for a new cape made of pure white feathers that draped down behind his back.

It was him.

The Aeralith Prince.

He was the man Alex had ever lost to in a real fight. Twice, he had confronted him, and he had been on the losing end. He was the one who had left him near dead on the clifftop. The one who watched Alex bleed in the dirt while his squad fought for survival.

The one Alex was most excited, and most worried, about fighting.

“Hello again, Prince,” Alex shouted out to him.

In response, the man drew his blade, the edge gaining a sheen of air aether immediately. He pointed the weapon at Alex and his eyes narrowed behind his mask.

“You will pay for what you did at the peace summit, Demon of Terraxum.”

For a moment, Alex was confused. But he realized quickly what the prince was implying.

He thinks it was me. He thinks I was the one who blew up the summit, killed Prince Kailin, and who knows how many more.

Obby began to laugh in his head. “Oh… he’s going to kill you. Hehehe.”