Fell Champions

Vex watched Otter go down in the space of two moves with a dull kind of horror. One moment, MoonCutter had been acting like a strange creature unfamiliar with basic interactions. The next, she’d torn Otter’s arm clean off while breaking through her Tenacity with an ease Vex didn’t think possible, and then promptly smacked Otter with the offending limb.

The blow had taken her clean across the jaw. Bone broke, an audible crack. Otter went down and didn’t get back up.

Blood pooled all around her. There was shouting everywhere, and suddenly Sami was flying through the air, her sword striking at MoonCutter, the damaged blade stopped cold by an invisible shield of Tenacity.

MoonCutter did that odd head tilt of hers, as if noticing Sami for the first time, and then swung Otter’s severed arm like a weapon at her. Sami darted back, out of range - or she would have, if the arm stayed the same length it had been.

The severed flesh and bone of Otter’s arm shifted, blurred, and suddenly it was thinner, longer, a whip-like sword of bone encased in skin and flesh, and slapped against the side of Sami’s head hard. Impossibly so. Sami’s Tenacity broke under the hit and she went flying to the side in a heap, knocking over benches as she went and probably breaking bones with every hit.

Otter and Sami were down, and it’d only been three seconds.

Vex was just standing, her reflexes too slow for this. She hadn’t been trained. Hadn’t ingrained this kind of fighting into her muscle memory despite having so much of the combat knowledge of both Rua and Otter combined. She felt slow, awkward, while everyone else was fluid and lightning fast.

Pandemona, who’d been standing right there when it all happened, took a deliberate step backward away from the fight. And then she closed her eyes, and slammed her palms together. There was the sound of thunder.

Kir and Rua were next, Kir taking point, clearly used to being the tank. Used to her Pact protecting her, that anyone attracted to her being completely unable to hurt her.

MoonCutter’s arm snapped to the side, and the warped flesh of Otter’s turned into a straight sword of bone and flesh even as it was thrust forward. Kir didn’t bother to block, instead trying for her own strike simultaneously.

Vex was finally on her feet, her mouth working, but the words came out a second too late.

MoonCutter’s sword went right through Kir’s Tenacity, and wasn’t blocked at all by her Pact. It went right into her chest, three inches deep, directly between her lungs and narrowly missing her heart. In exchange, Kir’s sword plowed right through MoonCutter’s own Tenacity shield and took her in the throat. Kir made a smug look before coughing blood and collapsing, her sword still embedded in her opponent’s neck.

“She’s a Fleshcrafter!” Vex yelled, too late.

MoonCutter tilted her head in that odd way, and calmly pulled the sword out of her neck, the wound sealing as she did.

Rua hit MoonCutter next, armed with two shortswords. One went directly into MoonCutter’s heart, the other took her hand - the one still holding Otter’s transfigured arm - clean off at the wrist.

MoonCutter punched out at her with the stubbed, the bone beginning to protrude out as she did, sharpening into a blade.

A blur appeared around Rua, and she dodged one way. But at the same time, it was like Rua split into two, and suddenly she was dodging both ways. There were two Ruas simultaneously, and Vex realized that this was Everett’s contribution. He’d disappeared from sight and was trying his hand at illusory distractions.

MoonCutter stabbed at one of the illusions, the bone spike at the end of her wrist passing harmlessly through it, allowing the other Rua to stab her in the thigh with her shortsword. The blood that spurted from the wound reshaped as it evacuated the thigh into razor sharp spikes that cut at Rua as they hit her.

“Mama!” Vex yelled, and suddenly she was in the fray at last, despite her slow and clumsy reflexes.

Sharps of red were sticking out of Rua’s face, her chest, her arm, but they were all tiny, small needles that inflicted more pain than damage. MoonCutter jabbed at Rua with the bone spike again, and Vex managed to intercept it with her own body, focusing her will, shifting her bones around and hardening them. The spike hit Vex full on where her heart should be, but splintered upon impacting an interior breastplate formed of her own bones. Skin scraped away, but the spike did no significant damage.

“A Fleshcrafter,” Mooncrafter said. But it wasn’t a woman’s voice that came from her mouth, but an elderly man’s. “Interesting. I did not foresee you. More deviations that must be removed. How is this happening? The future is as immutable as the past.”

She slammed a fist into Vex, shattering her Tenacity, and then went to follow it up with another punch with the same hand. Vex formed bone armor all throughout her arms and then braced herself into a defensive position. This was going to hurt.

And then Pandemona stepped between them, moving calmly, gently, her body suffused with a glowing white light… and caught Mooncutter’s arm mid-swing by the wrist. That arm had been delivering punches with all the force of a freight train, and Pandemona just… stopped it. She didn’t even make it look hard. It was as if all the momentum had been pulled out of the blow all at once.

MoonCutter’s eyes widened for a fraction of a second, and then turned to hatred. “You dare to use the blood of my brother against me.”

Pan smirked. “The only language everyone speaks is violence, but it’s not a language we should talk in. But if you wanna gab, then I can gab. Might be a short conversation, though.”

MoonCutter jerked away, pulling free, and stepped backwards, her hands - or hand, since she was missing one - dropping to her sides. Even as she did, LoneRunMan came up behind her, part of her entourage, and put her into a hold, pinning her arms behind her. His eyes looked apologetic, sorry for not acting sooner. Fitzkim hovered behind them both, clearly unsure of what to do.

MoonCutter made no resistance against being held, and made no move to attack further. If anything, Vex suspected that she - he? - was more focused on trying to solve a mystery that didn’t make any sense to them. Her eyes flitted from Pandemona, still glowing with the white aura, to Vex, her body covered in bone growths, to Otter, who was bleeding out on the ground.

Rua picked up the mutated mass that was once Otter’s arm and handed it to Vex. “Fix her. Please.”

“Of course, mama,” Vex said, taking the offered item reverently. She scrambled to Otter’s side, placing what was once her arm next to the stump, and melding the flesh back together, forcing the pooling blood back into Otter’s body.

Next, she reshaped Otter’s arm to be back to… well, an arm, and not the weapon it’d been forced into. She had to shut down Otter’s nerve endings in the area while she worked, otherwise the sudden changes might send her into shock and kill her.

MoonCutter sniffed at the air again, and a smile spread across her face. “It’s not just that one, the one called GrandTheftOtter, that has been compromised. Everything she touches has been, but that will naturally fix over time. But she’s tainted two of you as well somehow. The course of Fate itself has been altered. You, Lieseeker, should have killed yourself in your cabin, your dwindling food supplies forcing you to make a choice. A choice you were too afraid to make. And you, Fleshcrafter, should have remained in your tomb, never to be woken up again. The both of you were doomed, until Fate was altered.”

Vex blanched at that, at the thought of being stuck in that armor, of being in the dark forever. Of Mama ending herself, because she’d run away from her problems and never received a support system.

What was this being that had the powers of a Fleshcrafter, while wearing the body of a player?

“Get to Kir next,” Rua growled.

Vex hesitated, looking at the downed woman. Kir’s eyes were open, her face contorted in a snarl that she was unable to stand. Her soul power was likely the only reason she was still alive.

And if Vex hesitated just a little longer, Kir could bleed out. Mama would be free.

Apparently Rua knew what Vex was thinking, because she growled, “Now, Sunny.”

Vex scrambled to obey, getting to Kir and using her own Fleshcrafting to patch her up, sealing the wound and working on replenishing the missing blood. This was a lot easier than fixing the mess that was Otter’s arm. Vex wasn’t even sure she’d done a good job there. Some damage might last a while until Otter’s body naturally healed it.

When Vex was done, she scrambled to Sami next, as Rua continued her interrogation.

“And what are you?”

MoonCutter smiled a chilling smile.

And then Holt appeared amongst them, standing only a few feet away, his face focused in a small frown. He was wearing a tie-dye shirt, track pants, and no shoes or socks. His man-bun was done in an even more elaborate updo than normal. Somehow, he’d made himself look like even more of a douche.

“It’s a Dreamer,” he said. “MoonCutter didn’t use the proper protections when she made her Pact. So now she’s been hijacked.”

“You,” the Dreamer sneered.

“Me,” Holt said, spreading his arms and making a bow.

“I cannot see you. Not the real you. I can only see the clown. Are you responsible for this?” MoonCutter sniffed at the air, and her face soured. “No. You stink of the Well. But there is no Fate on you, at all.”

“Nice of you to show up,” Rua muttered.

Vex poured her Will into Sami. She was mostly a mess of broken bones and a bumped head, knocked unconscious and beat up, but nothing overly threatening. She’d be fine in no time.

“Did you really think I’d directly involve myself in an altercation with a Dreamer?” Holt asked. “Everyone might think I'm mad, and that might be true, but I’m not stupid. I wanted to see what kind of Pact was in play first. Luckily, MoonCutter hasn’t had the time to invest heavily in Will, and found herself against a weapon I prepared ahead of time.” He gave a small nod of his head to Pandemona, who studiously ignored him. “The Dreamer is limited in what it can do, forced by constraints on the body it’s inhabiting.”

“We only just started encountering people in the frozen wilderness where we spawned,” LoneRunMan said, still holding MoonCutter. “She’s been acting odd for a while now. Talking to herself. Disappearing for days at a time. Started getting really weird once we teleported here.”

Holt nodded. “It makes sense. She’s probably been in control until now, the Dreamer just sitting in the backseat, telling her what to do. Probably been gathering power while you haven’t been looking, harvesting soul crystals. Then once it caught Otter’s scent, it took over. Thank goodness it’s the Virturian Dreamer. According to my research, it doesn’t have access to the most dangerous Pacts, like Endbringer or Truthnamer or Deathtender. It’s one of the weaker Dreamers, in that sense, much like the Silayan Dreamer.”

MoonCutter spat. “All the Dreamers are equal in power. Only a know-nothing fool like you would say otherwise. Some of us just conserve power for when we need it at different points in the timeline. Investing so much as I did in this one was required to deal with the anomaly, and will have unfortunate repercussions.”

“What anomaly? You keep…” Holt’s eyes narrowed, and then he looked at Otter’s prone form. “Well, this just got interesting. You can’t see her, can you? Not like in the way you can’t see me. Different somehow. But… what Pact does she have?”

“I do not know,” the Dreamer inhabiting MoonCutter said. “It is… a new thing. The Sleeper in the Depths has woven a web of her own. Now that I am close, I can sense her hand in things. She has introduced… change into what should be immutable.”

“What is her Pact?” Holt asked again, this time looking directly at Rua. “And don’t play coy, or I’ll have to visit violence on someone you care about.”

The Dreamer laughed. “He plays his games, but he cannot directly harm those in it forced to play. It is one of the Rules. One he cannot violate.”

“Correction, I cannot harm a player.” He pointed at Kir, who was struggling to stand. “That one is not a player. Now, what is Otter’s Pact?”

“Fateweaver,” Rua said grudgingly.

The Dreamer spat and made an angry sound at the pronouncement, and Holt shook his head in disbelief.

Holt’s eyes widened, and he snapped his fingers in excitement.

“That… that’s how she’s been inserting people into my game! She’s been tying her fate to theirs! Oh, you have no idea how much that’s been bothering me. I knew it was some variant of Weaver, but to weave Fate itself? Oh, that’s marvellous, marvellous. I was seriously going to rank Otter as like, the twelfth most powerful, but this? This is number two material, easily. Technically number three, since we have a Dreamer in the mix now. Which reminds me…” He turned to the Dreamer, lifted a hand, and said, “Bye, Felicia.”

The Dreamer snarled, and suddenly MoonCutter blurred, and then vanished. LoneRunMan stumbled, no longer holding onto her body.

“Where’d she go?” he asked.

“The dead center of the Salassian Wastes. A temporary solution. I’ll have to make sure not to teleport her to the arena anymore. But she’ll find her way out eventually. Think of her as a snail that’s always going to know where Otter is, and if she touches Otter, she dies.” Holt smiled a wide smile to himself. “Fateweaver. Now that is something. I need to go. Need to plan! Oh, this just got so fun.”

“Wait. If Otter’s only the third most powerful, and the player possessed by a Dreamer is number one, who’s number two?” Vex asked from where she was, patching up Sami.

Holt cocked his head at her in a confused expression. “You, of course. Time for you all to go home. I suppose I should give Il-Su a head start. I’ve been mean enough to him already.”

He spun on his heel and vanished.