Azure popped out of the mirror, slightly blurry eyes targeting the struggling Linguist, who’d managed to pull his chain along somewhat as he desperately tried to make his way to the door. Azure had no mind for anything too complicated here. She immediately dove for the chain, grabbing it and pulling it away to help Linguist free. [Divine Mesmer] wasn’t the strongest class for the ‘direct’ route, but it wasn’t the weakest, either. She had an instinct about the chain, that was the main thing.

  Having thrown herself onto it like an offering, the chain quickly wound itself around her much better presented surface area instead, abandoning Linguist completely, who slipped free with a relieved gasp. He hesitated, so Azure called, “Go! They’ll need you. I’ll catch up on my own. Not just saying that, either. Distances and I have an… understanding.”

  He touched his heart briefly, apparently a gesture of thanks, before zipping away for the door.

  And so the simplest solution to a problem is executed. Tashome is going to love this little tale of ‘sacrifice.’

  Azure, entirely entangled on the floor, barely paid attention as the chain squeezed against her skin — skin which hardened more as it was strained. It would take a hell of a lot more to damage her. It was painful, sure, but she had a particularly unique relationship with pain. A twisting chain? Pfft. That was foreplay.

  Can’t believe I let myself get fucking blinded. Unbelievable. Just because you’re immune to her light doesn’t make you immune to light. Not exotic magic light. And we knew this! But you still just stared in single-minded obsession. Get it together, softy. Orswyth showed us up… then again, this chain could kill him rather than just tickle. Oh sh- eeee! It does tickle there, hrrrrnn!

  Azure winced and wriggled until the chain was pushed away from the problem area. Her eyes meanwhile scanned to see what else was happening in the room. Waytaker was engaged with the wand user — Wandy, as Samantha had mentally identified him. Waytaker was landing strikes before the other wraith could properly get his bearings. He was screeching bloody murder, in the wraith guards’ eerily cloned and repetitive manner.

  They share a kind of collective hallucination, I think. An accepted enchantment to stave off the depths of ferality like their brothers, if not their general madness. I suppose their role demands a little more.

  Azure’s sense of things was that Waytaker’s staff play would not cut it for dealing with him, though. Wandy was taking blows and righting himself, his wands in a total death grip.

  Michael, meanwhile, had wisely abandoned attempting melee engagement to lean on his core element: he’d blasted the still-reeling wraith with the hook staff with an exploding type light beam which sent him tumbling downward out of the air.

  The hook staff wielder was inhibited but had no quit in him, either. He still had eyes for those racing through the opening gate, and his hooks on their spooled-out fishing lines — apparently endless in extension — were moving to intercept.

  The one who’d thrown the explosive light orb remained slack-jawed. Phantasmal angels grabbed, slashed, and stabbed him with blades without resistance, chopping through armor and gouging deeply into tough substance that did not bleed. Dust came from his wounds instead, as momentum otherwise pushed him steadily toward the wall, swarmed by enemies.

  Orswyth cast a spell that formed a Hard Light disk that was carrying him quickly (much quicker than he’d float) to the doorway. He seemed to be trying to steer it in a curve, worried about the hooks suddenly veering back to come for him.

  Her Delightfulness Samantha was probably quicker and faster than anyone else there — along with Stargazer, she was already through the widening door still rapidly spilling out fog, obscured but discernible. Both of them were casting, but Samantha’s spell was already resolving from her fingertips.

  A huge mass of metallic wire filled the space in front of the doors, layers of them wrapped into cables in parts and making something like a web or loose net with much open space. The latter trait was a very good thing as Linguist was trying to fly right through it. Entirely party-friendly, the mass opened the way for him without impedance. Orswyth wasn’t far behind.

  The hooks on the other hand were given no such consideration. The wires whipped at them like vipers as they neared, curling around them and quickly turning the tables on who was grabbing who. The first two so grabbed had some sort of disturbance vibrate across the line’s length, and they went completely slack. The hook wielder cried out in fury.

  Azure understood immediately, knowing what those wires emulated. Ralli’s staff. They just caused a malfunction in the artifact! It isn’t just machinery that is affected by [Sabotage]. Ha!

  Apparently, it wasn’t enough to shut the whole staff down. The other two hooks suddenly pivoted and pulled away, not inclined to meet the same fate as their ‘brothers.’

  Azure remained more worried about Wandy, assuming the door area was covered. Wandy had also shown himself capable of dispelling, which was a bigger threat than anything when persistent spells were doing so much work for them at that point.

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  Need to help out with this one, I think.

  Fortunately, Azure was not tied down at all, despite appearances. She ‘pulled’ the nearby mirror to her. The nearest part of her to it was her feet, so she touched it with her boot and activated her relatively new [Spacial Transfer], usable as an action for energy expenditure, or before or after an action for free once per level per day. The experience was something like melting, twisting, and blinking eyes in between opening new ones elsewhere.

  She spilled out from another mirror very near Waytaker and the wand user. Fortunately, it was from behind Wandy, allowing Azure to flank. She quickly decided to utilize stealth and her [Nightblade] subclass, hands going to the hilts of her trusty enchanted daggers as she swiftly and quietly moved in…

  “Do not sully your hands with those pathetic blades, Ascendant One,” a voice suddenly exploded in Azure’s head, flatly derisive and offended. It was rich and resonant, yet like a too-loud whisper, slightly raspy. “Wield. Me.”

  The shock of it — a thousand needles pricked her inside and out — almost made her stumble. Instead, she stopped short. There was no time for thought or questions, however; moreover, knowing instantly who it was, she would not pass up the opportunity or show any further hesitation.

  Her hand closed around Deathsting’s hilt and she drew it smoothly as she went for a wicked stab in the back of the wraith.

  Sadly, the scorched and blackened wraith happened to be gaining his bearings finally. Instead of continuing to back up right into the strike near the wall of the room, he pivoted and flew upward.

  Just barely, Azure realized in time she could float in that place, not really being something she was used to doing naturally. She moved upward and went for a stab with smoothly flowing guidance from Deathsting… but having missed a step, Wandy had that much more time to adjust. He saw the blade coming at him and twisted his body away, managing to avoid both a staff swing and the blade at the same time.

  Gah! Did she even see me? I and Waytaker aren’t used to each other and not very coordinated together.

  Azure was sure she felt Deathsting growl in annoyance, but he said nothing further.

  Instead of engaging with them, Wandy flew to create more distance and cast his eyes toward the metallic mass by the doorway. Still moving, he appeared to be casting with one wand gesturing, but cautiously, essentially casting while still taking evasive maneuvers and attempting to escape a potential pin against the wall by two combatants.

  Rage like a river poured into her mind. “He thinks he can ignore us?!” The voice turned to ice. “Throw me, Wielder.”

  Azure pulled up short and obliged, hurling the dagger at Wandy. The wraith dodged it casually, as if child’s play, even using it tactically as an opportunity to shift forward and away from the wall, while avoiding Waytaker’s staff deftly.

  When the dagger was passing behind him, it morphed. Wings exploded out, a black and green snaky, dragon-like body unfurled itself, and the air was stained with the moisture and smell of decay, like the rich abundance of deteriorating life in the very heart of a swamp. In that mere moment, a wyvern spawned and flexed into animation, jaws of sharp teeth bared, reptilian eyes full of a predator’s malice glared, and a whipping long tail ending in a vicious stinger unfurled.

  Deathsting. What a dark beauty.

  Wandy had a brief moment to adjust and pivot once more, no doubt feeling the presence of the large beast behind him. Rather lazily to Azure’s eyes, the tail of Deathsting extended and struck, and Wandy dodged yet another strike.

  The particular motion of that tail was something else, though — a certain kind of twist and furl as it passed. A poise and tension from him, like a moment frozen, and then, with a sudden intense flexing of every muscle, with a literal whip-like motion and crack, the tail flicked outward from its position.

  Azure realized he’d done nothing more than set up the prey already caught in his trap.

  It was so fast, it was as if the tail teleported — unerringly, too, as the stinger took the wraith right through the skull. Caught in the middle of his spell, it failed right then and there as he convulsed. Screamed. It wasn’t the same as the typical wraith bellow at all. Instead, it was one of supreme terror and pain. That stinger had gone somewhere deeper than a brain in that particular spiritual entity.

  Wands fell from the wraith’s hands to clatter on the floor, and the energetic force of the being began to unravel and dissolve, the scream fading ‘into the distance.’

  “Freak of Unnature!” Deathsting called in his raspy voice, eyes fierce and pitiless. “Abomination! None escape the venom of the Mother’s spite itself — as you deserve, be unmade!”

  Fascinated and a bit horrified, Azure looked on as the wraith’s bodily form shredded and dissolved into faintly glowing mistiness and then nothing at all, the scream fading with it, on into probable oblivion.

  Deathsting’s stinger curled away finally, squirting one last dribble of some terrible venom onto the floor, where it began smoking immediately as it dissolved pneumanic matter.

  The eyes of the wyvern locked on hers, and time in her mind seemed to stand still. The mental voice whispered, “Wielder. Fret not for deserving victims. Your sweet conquest, your paramour, denies them absolution in error. She holds equal power to my act. Mercy misplaced by a prey mind. Two of these and one gone were already too far gone. Broken, senile, unable to release the indecipherable shards of the past.”

  Azure, feeling mentally paralyzed right then, tried to get herself together to respond.

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  Navigating the desires of a murderous sapient dagger? Azure's SO got this.

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