The person behind me didn’t waste a moment between being called forth and moving forward. Even with the guard moving me to the side, the man, a noble or some rich merchant based on his clothes, had one of his men shoulder me to the side. I stood there, a bit stunned at the fact that I was unable to get through and by just how rude these people were being.
Finally, though, I gave in and started to compose a message to Xander. Three rewrites later, and I was having second thoughts. While I got that the guy was one of my best friends, who was I to ask him to drop everything to come see me?
My minor internal struggle was brought to a screeching halt when someone called my name. “Kyren,” eyes shooting up, I found a maid and guard walking toward me. “It is Kyren, right?”
Is it weird that my first thought was to run away from the two of them? While they didn’t look all that threatening, the fact that they were cutting through the crowd as they made their way toward me likely meant that they were likely here because someone called them. “Yeah,” While I tried to control my voice, it still managed to have a slight stammering quality to it. “Can I help you?”
“Not really.” The maid spoke as she shot a look over her shoulder at the guard that trailed her. “I was just wondering what brought you to the grave.”
“Grave?” I asked, confused.
She rolled her hand in the direction of the black pillar. “It is just something some of the people here call this place. There are even rumors that a god or something is buried here and this was their companion's way of honoring them. But, enough about rumors and such, what are you doing here? Are you here to see the hot Alpha again?”
My body tensed as various images of him flashed through my mind's eye. Head shaking, I threw a question back at her. “No, how about you?”
“That is a shame,” her lower lip jutted out a little. “If you were then I could have escorted you to his office. I needed to head that way for my shift and I know how confusing the place can be for new people.”
Well, that was an option. Not one that I liked, but it would likely get me past the guards. Sure, I would have to speak to the guy, but maybe I could ask him something stupid before moving on. Actually, what if I asked him for directions to where I might fight Xander? Then I wouldn’t have to see him or even speak to him for longer than I had to.
“Guess we will see you…” She waved her hand as she stepped toward a guard.
Before she passed him, I called out to her, “Actually, can you? I need to ask the Alpha a question.”
Either she had control over earth or she had some skills because her pivot was fast enough that it was a blur of billowing clothes and fluttering hair. Her movement didn’t stop there. One of her hands flashed out to grab a wrist. None of the guards so much as looked our way as she pulled me after her.
Feet moving with the speed of Charley Brown, I barely managed to keep up with the woman as she wove her way through the jumbled mess that was the building’s halls. I was so focused on keeping up with her that I didn’t see where we were. Hell, I nearly slammed into her when she decided to stop.
Confused, I looked around to find that she had stopped us in a rather large, if empty, room. In fact, the only things in the place were the two doors, one on either side, and the three of us. It was as though this place was meant as a staging area or something. Not understanding what was going on, I tried to get a good look down the hall on the other side of the room, half expecting the Alpha to step through at any moment.
A loud, grumbling sigh escaped the maid’s lips as she dropped my wrist. “You are one hell of an annoyance, you know that?” Whereas her earlier tone had been light and happy sounding, she now sounded pissed and a bit annoyed about something.
“What do you mean?” I asked, thoroughly confused as to what was going on. “Where is the Alpha?”
Her laugh was closer to a bark than my fox yips, which is saying something given that they were coming from a human throat. “Did you really think I was going to bring you to the Alpha to tell on me? No, I need to stop you here and now, before you ruin everything I have worked for.”
This woman was crazy. I didn’t even know who she was, let alone what she might think I knew. Slowly, I moved toward the closest door as I distracted her with a question. “And what is it you think I know?”
The way her head tilted to look at me sent a shiver down my spine. Her body was facing away from me, but her head was somehow tilted backward and twisted just enough to let her eyes meet mine. “Oh, don’t play coy now. Not when you have managed to survive everything I could throw at you.”
Brows furrowed, I struggled to recall if I had ever seen this woman, let alone let her toss something at me. Nothing came to mind. “What are you talking about?” As I asked the question, my hand found a wall. It slid not even a food before getting zapped by something. The stinging appendage whipped back and forth through the air as I turned to look for the culprit. Sitting there, filling the doorway, was a shimmering red barrier. Now that I was facing it, I realized that it was making one hell of a racket. Likely as it tried to stop the very air from passing through it.
“Are you telling me that you were not the one to survive various attacks?”
“Well, I did but it isn't the first time.” Well, not really. Last time it was training, but I had a feeling she wasn’t talking about that or even various near-death accidents while on a mission. Still, my answer managed to catch her off guard. I took the opportunity to look at the other door. My hopes were dashed the moment my eyes landed on the bloody gap. Yet another red barrier blocked that route off. Annoyed and just wanting to get whatever this was, over with, I stopped and looked directly at the woman. “Look, can we get this over with? I have places to be, people to see.”
Those words snapped her out of whatever she was thinking about. Her manic eyes stopped flicking back and forth as they slid to meet mine. The gleam of crazy seemed to increase as they bore into me. It was as if she was looking for my soul through our eyes alone. “Of course, you would be so confident in this situation. After all, my powers don’t work on you. Too bad they don’t have to. Not if my goal is to kill you. For that, my power just has to work on someone else.”
The finger she pointed directed my eyes to the guard that had been trailing after us just in time to dodge his attack. While the attack wasn’t all that surprising, the fact that it was completely silent was. His thick leather and metal armor didn’t so much as make a squeak or clanging noise as the pieces rubbed against each other. The very air didn’t even move as the edge of his sword parted it. It was almost as though the world was ignoring him.
His downward swing turned into a spinning chop that I just managed to deflect with my own hastily called-sword. I ignored the pain as the poorly executed move sent a jarring wave of pain flashing up my arm. Splitting my focus between staying alive and making sure that I wasn’t attacked in the back, I was unable to stop him as his attacks continued. They came faster and faster as each flowing attack allowed him to build up momentum and power while I did everything I could to keep from getting hit.
Fortunately for me, it didn’t seem like the maid was willing, or able to step in. If the twisted expression on her face was anything to go on, she was struggling with something. As if he had been waiting for the moment I was looking at her, his magic struck out at me.
A wave of sickly green fire flashed toward me. Its waves licked at me as I tried and failed to counter it with my own flames. The only thing I managed to do was dodge and block the larger flames as tiny embers shot out of the spell. Unimaginable pain lanced through my body as the tiny embers landed on exposed flesh.
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The places felt like someone had poured hot acid onto my skin. I screamed bloody murder as I forced my body to move. To ignore the pain as I avoided the slicing attack that followed his spell.
His blade was aflame with the same sickly green fire as it sliced through the spot I had just been. Something told me that I didn’t want to block that. That doing so would just cause yet more sparks to jump out and hit me.
I dodged and wove my way around the room, keeping his weapon out of range as I tried to come up with another attack. While I could use magic, I didn’t know what she was capable of. Sure, if I had a ton of mana to waste, then I might have chanced it, but I didn’t. I had what was in my pool and the little in my storage. Internally I scoffed at the idea that what I had stored was little as I recalled just how little mana I had not even a week ago.
That scoff nearly cost me my arm as the guard attacked. Using some ability to cut across the distance in a flash of green light. His sword sliced a thin line down my left arm as I twisted away. The pain that lanced up my arm was enough to tell me that some of his flames had managed to grab ground inside the wound.
Heat crept up and down my arm as the flames slowly ate their way through my body. The worst part was, that every bit of blood that my body pumped through the wound only seemed to feed the hungry fire. Left with no choice, and in a bit of a panic, I unleashed my own flames into my blood.
I don’t know if I did it consciously or not, but the mana-born flames formed into the same spelled balls similar to those I used on the vampire. Droplets of my blood flicked and spurted out of my arm. The crimson liquid was awash in both pale blue and green flames as the two fought. Mine split between combatting the raging inferno and dodging his next swing, I nearly missed the follow-up.
At some point between my getting hit and now, the guard had managed to pull out a second blade the length of my forearm. Unlike the first, which was made of metal and glowing with fire, this one was made from some sort of bleached bone. Something about the blade called to me. It felt familiar, yet I couldn’t place why that was. The moment his surprise attack made contact with my stomach, I realized what it was.
My body went ridged as the blade stabbed through my dress and into the soft flesh of my belly. Surprisingly enough, the wound didn’t seem to bleed as much as one would think. The only trace of blood was the thin streams that oozed around the blade.
We both froze in place. For me, the reason was obvious. If I moved, I would die. The moment I pulled away, he would remove the blade, opening the devastating wound to bleed freely. Even with my emergency healing spell, I would be dead within a minute or two.
As for him, he looked like he was simply waiting for something. Like he was a robot that had reached the end of his program or encountered an error that he needed someone to fix before he could continue executing his orders. Seeing no way out of this that didn’t result in death, I decided to just throw my life away, taking at least one of them with me as I did so.
A soft tapping of the maid's heeled soles on the floor caught my attention. Before I could start condensing all of my mana into a firebomb, she spoke. “Before I have him finish you off, I just have to know, how are you blocking me.”
“What do you mean?” I answer, confused by her question. The strength of my voice surprised me given the amount of pain I should have been in given the fire burning its way through my arm and the knife in my gut.
She pushed the guard to the side as she went to look me in the eyes. The jerky movement caused the knife in my gut to twist a little, sending a wave of agony zipping up my spine as the blade scraped against something hard. Given that there was little in the way of bones in that section, I would have to guess the blade was scraping against my spine.
“You really don’t know, do you?” It was more of a statement than a question.
Still, I answered her. “Not really, no.”
Her laugh reminded me of how some movies picture a crazy person who found something funny. The volume of it, and the echoes that reverberated off the walls, caused me to wince in pain. Finally, she got a hold of herself. Wiping her eyes, she met my eyes. “Oh, I am going to have fun breaking your mind. To make you want to serve me willingly, without the need for me to control you.”
“What do you mean control?” I demanded as I looked at the guard and noticed his blank eyes for the first time. An idea of what she was doing came to me, but the thought horrified me.
“Oh, I have no ability with any element, and it isn’t like my benefactor would let me train in any weapons. In fact, that asshole wouldn’t have let me gain a level if it didn’t help him in some way. Lucky for me, the SoulStone granted me a power. One that allowed me my freedom. It was almost as though the very gods were looking out for me.”
“What power?” I asked, afraid of the answer.
“Mental manipulation.” She spoke as if the answer should be obvious. Given the guard, it should have been. But the very idea scared me.
“If you hated being controlled, why would you go around controlling others?” I asked as I slowly took control of all the mana in my body. Directing it toward my center. Condensing something akin to a second orb. Pushing my Mana Manipulation as far as I could as I tried to keep it from exploding.
“Because they deserve it.” She threw her arms up as if it was obvious. “And it isn’t like I am controlling everyone, just those that go after me or threaten me in some way.”
“Then how would you know I was resisting you?”
“Just because I wasn’t controlling everyone does not mean I couldn’t let people wander around freely. I didn’t need some random person to stumble in and make a mess of my plans. Not until that man and his friends paid for what he did.”
Seeing an opportunity to extend the conversation, I took it. “What did they do to you?”
“The man had the gall to get me to sign an indentured servitude contract and then refuse to fulfill his side. You would think I could go to one of the people in the government for help, but the moment I did, they did nothing but return me to my owner.”
“What was he supposed to do?”
“He was supposed to help my family get a place in this world.” Her voice was slowly rising with each word. “Instead, they are stuck on Earth in a section where the grid has already failed. They don’t even have the ability to get to a city, let alone the money needed to pay to use a pod.”
The realization that the situation on Earth was getting worse nearly caused me to lose control over the orb of pure mana. My mind and mana struggled with the ball as I forced it to stabilize and condense a bit.
Thankfully, she didn’t notice my distraction, instead continuing her rant. “He said it would cost more than my contract was worth to go get them and to be thankful I was even allowed the privilege to be here. If not for the fact that he was twice my level, I would have taken the chance to kill him there and then.”
“What are you waiting for?” I tried to make the question come out without gritting my teeth.
“By the time I was strong enough to take him, I realized that there would be no point. He would just come back. No, I needed to destroy everything his little ground made. Everything that made them powerful. I needed to take down this city.”
“That’s why you were targeting the oracles…” I whispered as another piece of the puzzle clicked into place.
“Those meddling things were starting to get annoying. No matter how I helped the demons get closer, they managed to get a warning out in time for the attack to be thwarted.” Her hands flew up, smacking the guard in the face. He didn’t so much as flinch. “With their gifts being mental, the only thing I could do was distract them and keep them from pointing to me as the suspect as I killed them over and over.”
“Why not just lock them up? Given how much control you have over this guard, such a thing shouldn’t be so hard for you to do.”
“Sure, if I had enough power I could control a dozen or two, but then I would lose my hold over everyone else. It would leave them open to thinking, plotting, and working against me. No, I was better off keeping one guard under my complete control while preventing everyone from even considering me as a suspect. I even had enough power left over to convince a few mages to part with a one-use enchantment or a poison. Stuff that they wouldn’t miss or wouldn’t admit to having made.”
She turned, her hands clasped behind her as she slowly started to pace. “But then there is you. Someone that I couldn’t manipulate in any way. Almost as though something else, someone else, already had a hold over you.”
Fear flashed through me at the idea of someone, anyone, gaining control over me. Images of the demon, his spawn, and her party all flashed through my mind as I tried to figure out who it might be. But, just as fast as the fear filled me, it dissipated as I realized what it was. Realized why she would never have control over me. Why no one would ever be able to gain control over me.
She must have noticed something in my expression because she suddenly turned and demanded to know what I just realized. Instead of answering, I let my head fall as I chuckled. A sharp twist of the knife turned the chuckles into a gasp of pain.
My head lifted so that I could look at her as I spoke, “You can’t control me because I am a Kitsune and you don’t have my ball.” As I shot her a smile, a bit of blood lent itself to my lack of care as it trickled out of my mouth. Her eyes widened in realization. Too bad there was nothing she could do with it. Not when I finally released my control over the packed sphere of mana. Hell, I didn’t just release the thing, I mentally pushed and pulled at the mana in an effort to help it along.
The world stuttered for a moment before blinking out, replaced by a blinding white light. An eternity and less than a moment later, the white was replaced with nothingness.
