Friendly Fyre [Gender-bender Cozy Kingdom Builder]

Zeyaelid steps in my direction. “I’ll take care of this one. The rest aren’t too much for you to handle, are they?”

Mura Tal grits his teeth. “No.”

My interface crackles with a new message.

[K̶a̵n̷i̶n̸: what are you doing]

[Fyre: Protecting my people. Get Dizzi back to the Fortress. I can handle the champion.]

[K̶a̵n̷i̶n̸: did you check her level]

I would be a bit irritated that he thinks I’m that rash if the situation weren’t so dire.

[Fyre: Yes, in fact, I know what I am getting myself into. Now get the others out of here.]

Besides, I can handle this. I’ve spent countless hours sparring with Mirzayael, so I’m best suited to fight another arachnoid. The Dungeon Core may be out of my range, but I still have plenty of firepower—as well as all of its mana at my disposal.

And as queen of the Fyrethians, it is my duty to protect Dizzi. It’s my duty to protect all of my people.

[K̶a̵n̷i̶n̸: don’t be stupid]

I blink in surprise, sparing him a quick glance, but my attention is quickly drawn back to Zeyaelid as she leisurely strolls in my direction.

“Fyre,” the arachnoid considers. “We don’t have that name on our list of Travelers.”

I smile dryly. Only registered the name I was born into this world with, did they? “Perhaps you need to update your database.”

“Indeed. I am surprised you managed to evade our attention before now.” Zeyaelid tips her head. “Did a remnant help you with that?”

A couple gods, actually. But she doesn’t need to know that.

She’s just a champion, not a god—she doesn’t have System access, so she shouldn’t be able to tell if I have a remnant or not. And she also won’t be able to Check my stats, like I can with her. I’ve got that advantage over her, at least.

Yet, they have my name, and who knows what else Teranu managed to glean before we repelled him from the Fortress?

Zeyaelid pauses to look over Kanin’s amorphous glass and shadow form. “Is that the remnant you wield?"

I keep a neutral face. She thinks Kanin is a remnant? Well, I guess she’s not entirely wrong, given Ink is here, too. But I’m not about to betray Kanin’s presence, especially as his name is known to the Heavens. How can I use this misunderstanding to my advantage?

How do I get us all out of this situation alive? Think. Think!

Mura Tal glares at Kanin. “I thought it was a remnant. But I wasn’t expecting them to look like this.”

“They typically don’t.” Zeyaelid’s tone is conversational. As if the tension that permeates everyone else in the square doesn’t even touch her. “But they can come in many forms. Retrieve a refiner for us, would you?”

More of these refiners. It’s an odd name choice, given they seem to act more like prisons where remnants are concerned. But maybe containment is not their only purpose. What might these refiners be refining? And to what end?

A light appears at one of Mura Tal’s fingertips, and he traces a circle in the air before him—the first shape of a spell circle. I summon a bout of flame to my hands, but Kanin gets there first. He lashes out with a whip of glass and void, grabbing Mura Tal’s wrist and interrupting the spell, which falls apart in motes of light.

That’s the last of that fight I get to see before Zeyaelid attacks.

[Lightbeam activated.]

I launch a condensed beam of fire at the arachnoid before she reaches me, pouring thousands of mana from the Dungeon Core’s stores into the attack. Even if I can’t use the Core to affect the surrounding landscape out here, at least I can still access all the magic it’s saved up from the Drifting Isles. Zeyaelid barely slows down, summoning a whip of light that she slashes through my attack. The two collide in a dazzling display and light up the surrounding Ruins: a snapshot of white stone and black shadows framing the battlefield before the fight collapses in once more.

Zeyaelid charges forward even as I go stumbling back. Some of my ongoing Lightbeam catches her in the chest, yet she pushes against it as if she’s wading through nothing more than water.

Bullets of glass strike her next, pinging harmlessly off her armor. One manages to hit one of her secondary eyes, causing her to flinch; it gives me just enough time to slip out of her range.

Kanin moves in to distract her, snapping out limbs of glass to deflect each strike of her whip. I use the opportunity to activate my Jets. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my spars with Mirzayael, it’s that range is my primary advantage.

The arachnoid charges forward, taking the brunt of Kanin’s attacks as she bowls him over, stabbing several of her limbs through his form. She snaps her whip toward me, and even as I’m still rising from the ground, her weapon manages to snag one of my claws. She yanks on the line, launching me back toward the ground. Mirzayael has pulled this move on me more than once, but this time I doubt I’m about to be caught in careful arms before I hit the ground.

A shadow darts beneath me. I strike it, and though I do hit the ground hip-first, the compressive shadow significantly dampens the blow. The moment I’m on the ground, the void rushes out from underneath me, forming claws to grab the whip still wrapped around my ankle. Zeyaelid yanks back on her weapon, and I brace myself. But the light dissolves between the shadow’s claws before she can drag me across the ground, and the whip dissolves into scraps of magic.

Zeyaelid doesn’t retreat, but she does raise a surprised eyebrow. “Inconvenient.”

I scramble backward, picking myself up with a wince. Kanin—or Ink, I’m not entirely sure—has formed some sort of amorphous shape between me and Zeyaelid. My right wing and hip are throbbing from the impact, but it could have been much worse.

“Thank you,” I say. But privately I send him a message.

[Fyre: What are you doing?]

The shadowy form before me gives some sort of derisive growl.

[K̶a̵n̷i̶n̸: helping. obviously]

But he needs to be helping Dizzi. And Aquenno. The whole reason I’m fighting this champion is to buy time for them to reach safety.

[Fyre: I can take her on my own.]

[K̶a̵n̷i̶n̸: no you cant. and youre not on your own]

I’m about to object when a flash of movement catches my eye. Noli and Aquenno are fending off Mura Tal, though they’re not fighting alone. Shadow and glass dart around their attacks to stab toward the champion or block his attacks. I glance back toward Dizzi and Ollie, and I find more of Kanin’s elements stationed there, too. He’s split himself three ways—at least—and is helping everywhere at once. I can’t imagine how he’s managing it, but he’s right; I don’t need to fight this fight by myself.

The next time Zeyaelid attacks, Kanin and I meet her together.

I send more Fireballs and Lightbeams her way, and Kanin blocks her attacks with shade and glass. When she aims for me, Kanin forms a shield of glass. When she targets him, I launch concussive blasts of fire to knock her askew. The elements mix in an impressive lightshow, my firelight scattering through prisms and rippling through void.

Even so, we’re on the defensive. It shouldn’t be a surprise, given her level—in fact I’m proud we’re doing as well as we are. But we can’t keep this fight up forever; we need something bigger to take her out in one decisive blow.

“FYRE?” Ollie asks.

I clench my jaw, trying not to let his voice distract me from the fight. One slip up, and this could be the end of me. “I’m a little busy, Ollie. Is it your Role?”

“NO,” he says. “WELL, THE ROLE IS STILL TELLING ME TO GO PROTECT YOU. BUT THAT’S WHAT I WANTED TO SAY! DIZZI HAS AN IDEA TO HELP.”

“Tell me,” I reply without hesitation. Zeyaelid shatters one of Kanin’s glass limbs, attempting to pin him down. His body simply disassembles itself, however, retreating to rebuild itself before me. “Quickly!”

“UM, OKAY, SHE SAYS THERE CONTAINMENT CUBES THAT SHE’S BEEN USING TO COLLECT STORM ARCANA FOR KANIN’S SPELL,” Ollie says.

I glance around the square, quickly picking up on a handful of large, crate-sized cubes I’d mistaken for parts of the Ruins in the dark. Dormant spell circles are carved into their surfaces.

“What about them?” I ask.

“DIZZI SAYS I CAN BLOW THEM UP!”

“I—what?” Activating Psionic Sense, I listen through Ollie’s ears.

“That one,” Dizzi is telling him. “But we have to wait for the right moment. Tell Fyre to lure Zeyaelid over there.”

Ollie mentally replies to me. “SHE SAYS—”

“I heard,” I stop him. I Check the containment cube off to our left: it’s packed with over a hundred thousand points of Storm arcana. Damaging it will certainly cause some damage to the champion—and the rest of us.

But Dizzi knows what she’s doing. This can help us turn the tide of this fight.

“Alright. I’ll try to get us over there,” I say to Ollie.

He uses his translator to pass my message onto Dizzi. “SHE SAID SHE’LL TRY. BUT I THINK SHE’S BUSY.”

Dizzi snorts. “I’ll say.”

I access the Chat Interface to fill Kanin in on the plan—easier said than done when you’re still in the midst of fighting for your life.

[Fyre: We need to get her toward those mana containment cubes.]

His response comes instantly.

[K̶a̵n̷i̶n̸: we know. we’re with dizzi]

Right. Kanin’s pretty much everywhere right now. But that only makes it easier for me. Wordlessly, Kanin and I begin to maneuver the direction of our fight.

It’s not easy. Zeyaelid’s attacks are a blur of movement, almost impossible to predict, and without Kanin I doubt I’d be able to dodge most of them. When Kanin grabs one of Zeyaelid’s limbs to stop her from spearing me through the side, I immediately follow it up with a concentrated blast of fire. When I head left, Kanin heads right. The champion might be more than both our levels combined, but she can’t defend herself from every direction at once.

But the fight is wearing on me—I don’t have nearly as much stamina as I would like. I slip once, my injured hip giving out, and Zeyaelid very nearly ends it then and there. Kanin grabs me, shadowy limbs wrapping around my torso and jerking me back, and I narrowly avoid an arachnoid leg through my gut. I gasp, trying to catch my breath, but when I attempt to rejoin the fight, Kanin doesn’t let me go.

“DIZZI SAYS GET READY,” Ollie tells me.

Ah. That’s why.

The next time Zeyaelid rears up to attack, Kanin dives away from her, pulling me with him. I wrap my hands around my head as Kanin likewise cocoons his void around me as the world flashes white.

“ICE BEAM!” Ollie excitedly cries.

I feel the burst of cold wind for only a moment, because it’s immediately followed by an explosion that rips through the square. A blast of compressed air sends us tumbling back, debris pinging off Kanin’s glass. A few stings of pain cut across my skin where Kanin wasn’t able to block everything, but only a handful of seconds later, the explosion of magic has passed. The void unfurls from around me, and I spill out onto the ground in time to see shields of glass and void uncurling from around Aquenno and Noli as well.

It’s such a bizarre, alien form, I have to remind myself there’s a human mind in all of that. Of course, I’m sure much of the versatility is due to Ink, but I still can’t help but wonder, in this moment, how much of Kanin is in there.

Zeyaelid and Mura Tal have been blown from their feet. A cloud of dust has engulfed the square, my firelight and Kanin’s Glow spells casting the area in a thick, hazy fog. Zeyaelid growls, stumbling to her feet. I Check her health.

[HP: 512/650]

My heart sinks. All this work, and so little damage? Even if we managed to use all the other containment cubes this way—a ruse she’s unlikely to fall for again—we still might not be able to win this fight alone.

The thought summons words that Kanin said to me only minutes before: You’re not on your own.

Afterall, what was the purpose of trying to befriend the gods if I can’t ask them for help when I most need it? They’ve been telling me for months that they’re on our side. Now it’s time for them to prove it.

I open the chat interface once more, this time accessing Blair’s name.

[Fyre: We need your help.]

But as soon as I’ve sent those words, they are replaced with new ones.

[Message failed to deliver.]

Damn. My heart sinks—but I’m not given time to feel it before a light appears in Mura Tal’s hands.

Kanin flinches back.

[K̶a̵n̷i̶n̸: refiner. we can’t get close]

Before I can respond, his void flees the square. His glass stays nearby, at least, but he doesn’t need to tell me he’s hamstringed. We may have dealt a blow to the champions, but this will cripple us far more.

Mura Tal vanishes into the shadows. Noli spins around, nocking an arrow and firing it with blinding speed. The dhampyr reemerges from the shadows near where Noli had fired, looking extremely annoyed.

“I’ve had enough of your interference,” he growls.

Noli stands her ground as Aquenno steps up beside her, his good hand raised. The air before him begins to shimmer.

With all their attention on the dhampyr, they don’t see Zeyaelid move until it’s too late. I cry out in warning, summoning a useless fire to my hands, but by the time they’re turning her way, she’s already bowling into them. Glass scatters, and Noli is knocked back. The arachnoid didn’t appear to be interested in either of them, however. She pins Aquenno down, jabbing a leg into the wound in his shoulder. The nereid cries out with a pained gasp.

“Your allies don’t need to be involved,” Zeyaelid says, casually addressing me. Noli and Kanin are picking themselves up, but Mura Tal is in between them and Aquenno. I scrunch my hands into furious fists, snuffing my flames out.

“We’re only here for you and your remnant,” the arachnoid continues. Aquenno grunts as she digs her limb into his wound. “Along with this traitor.”

To put an end to all this, to save him and Ollie and Dizzi—I would give myself up. If I thought it would stop all this pain and suffering, I’d sacrifice myself in an instant.

But by definition, a sacrifice causes pain. It wouldn’t hurt me, but it would hurt Ollie, because of his Role. And it would hurt Dizzi and Nek, who see me as family.

And it would hurt Mirzayael, because she is family.

“I’m afraid I can’t give myself up,” I reply. “I have people here who are depending on me.”

Zeyaelid gives me a disappointed look. “I wasn’t making a request; I was informing you of the facts. You can come quietly, and we’ll leave your allies out of it, or they can try to intervene, and they’ll face the consequences of such an attempt.”

I open the Chat Interface again, this time selecting L.

[Fyre: Lorata’s champions are here. If you want to help us as much as you say, now is the time to show it.]

I send the message and wait. The words don’t vanish from the Interface. My heart skips, daring to hope.

[K̶a̵n̷i̶n̸: do you have a plan]

Well. In a manner of speaking.

[Fyre: I’m working on it.]

[K̶a̵n̷i̶n̸: that’s a no]

[Fyre: We still have options. We just need to stall until friends can arrive.]

Kanin doesn’t respond, but I can almost feel the dubiousness in his silence.

Well. I guess now it’s time to practice what I preach. “If I come with you, what will you do with me?”

Zayaelid smiles, though there’s no kindness in the expression. “You will be processed, and your remnant will be evaluated.”

“Will I have the opportunity to speak to Lorata?” I ask.

The champion gives me a considering look. “Only if she wills it. She does not have time to speak with every mortal who comes seeking her council.”

I stand a little straighter. “I am not every mortal.”

Zeyaelid snorts, narrowing her eyes. “I assure you, Travelers are not nearly as special as they seem to believe.”

Then, Mura Tal moves. If there was a signal between the two champions, I didn’t catch it. Kanin flinches away, this time even his glass leaving me. Noli steps between them. I move in their direction. Zeyaelid summons another whip of light, snapping it toward me.

The fight abruptly resumes, but this time it’s a full-on retreat. I launch a Fireball too big to be dispelled by her whip, and the arachnoid sidesteps the attack, moving off of Aquenno. A Lightbeam strikes her in the face—not one of mine, but coming from one of Kanin’s clusters of glass. Then another hits Mura Tal, and another.

It’s not doing much damage, but it’s at least getting in their eyes and making it hard for them to follow us. I take the opportunity to grab Aquenno and attempt to drag him away from the fight. If we can make it to Ollie, this may be our only chance to escape.

Zeyaelid sneers down at me with a look of disdain. She raises another one of her legs, as if readying to squash a bug.

[You have been subjected to a Greater Spell of Darkness.]

A powerful wind blasts through the square, and the lights go out. It’s pitch black. Complete darkness. There is no light from my flames, no glow from Zeyaelid’s whip. Even the stars overhead are gone. For a moment I wonder if I’ve died once again and have fallen back into that lightless space between worlds. But it doesn’t take long for the true cause of this darkness to reveal himself.

“My, my, isn’t this quite the scene.” Shirasil’s laugh rings through the black. “What a mess. And to think you all started without me?”